Blessing 2

These two quotes, from yesterday and today, speak of receiving God's blessing and returning the blessing, creating a continuous circle or world of blessing, love. (However, the following words were written by an Orthodox theologian in patristic language. The italics in parentheses are my way of trying to be inclusive.)

"Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for God. To be sure, man (humanity) is not the only hungry being. All that exists lives by 'eating.' The whole creation depends on food. But the unique position of man (humankind) in the universe is the he (she) alone is to BLESS God for the food and the life he (she) receives from God. He (A human) alone is to respond to God's blessing with his (her) blessing. . .

"To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it. And in the Bible to bless God is not a 'religious' or a 'cultic' act, but the very WAY OF LIFE. God blessed the world, blessed men (humanity), blessed the seventh day (that is, time), and this means that God filled all that exists with God's love and goodness, made all this 'very good.' So the only NATURAL (and not 'supernatural') reaction of man (humankind), to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, is to bless God in return, to thank God, to SEE the world as God sees it and--in this act of gratitude and adoration--to know, name, and possess the world. . . The first, the basic definition of man (humanity) is that he (she) is THE PRIEST. He (Humanity) stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his (her) act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist, he (she) transforms his (her) life, the one that he (she) receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with God."

~~Alexander Schemann in For the Life of the World