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The first Bible reference that comes to mind is Jacob's blessing of Isaac (Gen. 27:28). Countless times in the Gospels Christ blesses something, the most notable that comes to mind is the bread and wine at the Last Supper: "And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This ...
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To bless is related to to consecrate. Both imply an act of recognizing and/or declaring and devoting something to have a particular purpose or holiness.
If a father blesses his son's decision in a matter, we mean that the father supports and acknowledges the decision.
If a priest blesses a marriage, he declares, with the approval of the whole Church in the ...
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It is a good when a new person comes into existence; God still creates a rational soul out of nothing even for those conceived as a result of sin.
But it is never moral to use evil means
in the case of IVF:
depriving a child of his or her right to be conceived in an act of marital love
masturbation to obtain semen
killing many people by subjecting them to ...
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I used to listen to the Vatican Radio podcast which included a recording of the Pope's Urbi et Orbi blessing and they would put a disclaimer in the recording that the blessing didn't apply to recordings, only to those present or watching/listening live. The key distinction is live versus a recording; even if you're watching the EWTN web stream -- which ...
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This is an ancient custom which predates Christianity. Pliny (Natural History 28.5) records a custom among the Romans of greeting someone who sneezes:
Why is it that we salute a person when he sneezes, an observance which Tiberius Caesar, they say, the most unsociable of men, as we all know, used to exact, when riding in his chariot even? Some there are, ...
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Blessing expresses the basic movement of Christian prayer: it is an encounter between God and man. In blessing, God’s gift and man’s acceptance of it are united in dialogue with each other. The prayer of blessing is man’s response to God's gifts: because God blesses, the human heart can in return bless the One who is the source of every blessing.
(Catechism ...
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TL; DR - essentially, it is a method of praising God and bringing him glory.
This article addresses the very issue:
There are two main things that we do when we bless the Lord. The first is synonymous with giving thanks and praise. Some translations actually say, “Give thanks to the Lord,” where others say, “Bless the Lord.” So, blessing the Lord is ...
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Your question is interesting and it is something that I have talked about a lot Since I was part of that movement in the early 90s and left it only to eventually begin studying Early Church history and theology later. It is very difficult (possibly impossible) to find anything like the Faith and Prosperity Movement in the Early Church. While the Early ...
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"Bless you!" is short for "[May God] bless you!"
So, you are not blessing a priest, but asking God to.
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I'll handle these questions in two parts: first, the connection between the words blessed and elect (including, as you request, a definition of blessed), and second, if the qualities listed are somehow indications of whether someone is elect or not.
Connection between blessed and elect
It's very clear to Calvinists, and, I suspect, to at least most ...
answered Nov 9 '15 at 14:39
Nathaniel is protesting
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You could take the word "atheist" here and replace it with any group. Any religion, including (yes, really) Christian has people who fit that description. And there are people from every religion, and atheists, who that description fails to describe. You could also use labels such as political alignment, county of origin, gender - and you'd get the same hits ...
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Yes, it is completely valid to attribute any blessing to God from a variety of Christian perspectives. In short, all things are ordained by God.
As for the "less attractive" person, God has most likely blessed her with other attributes.
And if not, a perfectly Christian answer to why some are blessed with certain things and other are not is the one God ...
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The practice is not Christian, by doctrine, but became Christian by circumstance.
During the Black Death, a plague which killed approximately 25% of the Earth's population in 14th century, sneezing was thought to be a first symptom of the infected.
But the practice can be traced to long before that, however, it is still related to the Black Death. Gregory ...
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The Pope can bless objects and people implicitly during his audiences - any prayer and speech of the Pope gives Apostolic or Papal blessing to those listening and seeing the pope and to their loved ones unable to participate but connected through prayer. Any "holy symbol" the blessed people have with intention to have it blessed is blessed too (I guess that ...
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Blessing of an item is sort of a "package for prayer". The blessing is essentially a prayer for something to remind us Christ and our faith. For example, water reminds especially baptism and everything Jesus did about it in the events recorded in Bible (not only in New Testaments, there are some images pointing to baptism in Old Testament, like passage ...
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All baptized persons may bless, even non-Catholics. But not all blessings may be given by all people.
As a vague rule, blessings involve things and persons over which one has been granted spiritual authority by God. For this reason, parents can appropriately bless their children, persons their homes, and those with appropriate Holy Orders can bless water, ...
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The page linked to in the question shows two versions of the Prayer over the Water which were introduced in 2015. These are alternatives, in "accessible language", to the main Prayer over the Water in the Common Worship baptism liturgy. The Common Worship baptism liturgy is itself an alternative to the Book of Common Prayer baptism liturgy which, alone, is ...
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The Lord is blessed in His very being as part of His condition or state of being (along with timeless, omnipotent, omniscient, good, etc.). We can simply announce that as a way of blessing God.
“Blessed be the Lord” may by our desire that all know His "condition," or let all celebrate His blessed "condition."
Noah, Abraham, et al., blessed others with a ...
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The problem of theodicy is present throughout the Bible, and so I am not going to give an exhaustive answer. I will say, However, that even Jesus said that His Father caused "rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike," (Matthew 5:45)), meaning that in this present age, the wicked will, in fact, be seen to prosper.
Some of what the Bible says on the ...
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Each passage was written for its times and its own purpose.
The threats of intergenerational accountability (Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:7, Numbers 14:18, Deuteronomy 5:9) were written to make the Jews really think about the consequences of worshipping other gods - they might not have been worried about their own fate, but what about their children and ...
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The reason is:
The Church provided a special blessing of wine in honor of the Saint.
According to legend St. John drank a glass of poisoned wine without
suffering harm because he had blessed it before he drank. The wine is
also a symbol of the great love of Christ that filled St. John's heart
with loyalty, courage and enthusiasm for his Master; he ...
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Granmirupa is correct. Going to add a little more info. According to the St. Anthony Messenger:
BOOK
"According to Francis X. Weiser in the Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (Harcourt Brace), as late as 1952 Catholics in Central Europe brought wine and cider to church for blessing on the feast of St. John. They then took it home and some of them ...
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It's worth noting that even though IVF is a bad thing, this has no spiritual implications for people conceived in such a way. God is a master of making lemonade from lemons (Romans 8:28).
In fact, if you trace the genealogies of Jesus, you'll find that in the genealogy according to Matthew, Jesus is said to be descended from Solomon, and in the genealogy ...
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The priest blessing is a sacramental (not a sacrament). So it can confer to the person who receive it a special grace. Also it can bring indulgences as in the Urbi et Orbi blessing or the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
The paternal blessing is important and a very old tradition as stated in the Bible: "Benedictio patris firmat domos filiorum" (The ...
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what someone finds beautiful, another finds ugly. If they can use their beauty to help others it could even be a gift. I think of Queen Esther in these regards, she was blessed with beauty and that gave her the opportunity to become a queen. She used what she had (beauty) to become a queen. And she had courage enough to ...
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Physical beauty is not ultimately subjective. Our notions of physical beauty are often tainted and perverted by sin, but they're ultimately and objectively based on health and procreative power. Numerous studies confirm this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness.
And, particularly in Catholicism, procreative power and the act of procreation ...
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My Dad used to have some words hung on the wall in his office that said, "I'm me, I'm wonderful, 'cause God don't make junk."
I say that because I think this is what it's all about. Neither my Dad (nor I for that matter) are particularly attractive men. We're both stocky and somewhat short. That being said, I could consider my build to be a curse, or I ...
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Short Answer: Biblically speaking, absolutely not.
First, let me clarify that I do think a case could be made that disfigurement is the result of sin. For example, if a person were covered in warts, or scars, or had a cleft lip, or was missing an eye, or was obese, or malnourished, I think it would be safe to say that person had experienced the effects of ...
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It's important to keep in mind that the stories about the patriarchs are both stories about individuals and "national origin" stories giving an identity to the whole nation of Israel.
So in the case of Jacob (also known as Israel), the promises get borne out (a) in his great success as a herdsman for his uncle Laban, accumulating a huge amount of personal ...
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