Saturday, May 2, 2020 –
This post started out as an homage to the glorious tradespeople who keep our home from falling apart. However, I quickly realized there was a whole other set of people that keep our properties from falling into spiritual disrepair: Priests!
If you have not had your home, office, car, etc. blessed, DO IT! Schedule that as soon as your Priest is available and able to roam the earth again. We thankfully have a marvelous Priest who has blessed all our properties and cars using the traditional blessings in Latin from the Rituale Romanum.
I kid you not, we rely on these blessings! Yes, we have insurance. Yes, we take care of our stuff. But YES, we absolutely put our trust in God and His protection.
You see, dear reader, I have some crazy blessing stories. I have promised to write letters on behalf of at least two priests when their cause for canonization comes up because there have been some real miracles post-blessing!
I am 100% certain that on more than one occasion those blessings have prevented explosions. Literally…EXPLOSIONS!
My favorite blessing is of Andrew’s office building. After the purchase, we dropped off a key for Father to stop by at his convenience.
Side note: you do not actually have to be present at a house blessing. It is neat to watch, but you can also make it super easy on your Priest if you give him a key BEFORE you move in. Let him do his thing whilst the place is totally empty! Seriously, before you change the locks on your new digs, let the Priest do his thing. We have had a few properties done this way, and our Priest really appreciated not having to schedule a fuss or dinner. He got in, got to blessing, and got out. We give him an “I’m blessed!” card to leave next to the door and pick up the key from the office later.
Back to the story: we figured Father would need to stop by in the evening because Priests are known to be busy. So that the man in black would not be stumbling around a dark, abandoned building, Andrew tried to fix a couple of light fixtures. He flipped some switches in the main breaker, we heard a few loud pops, there may have been a spark or two. Basically, things went pear-shaped rather quickly and the whole building just sort of stopped working…completely dead. Granted, it was not in great shape to begin with, but I digress.
Anyhow, we notified Father to come equipped with flashlight, and then called Manfred, our electrician (more on him tomorrow). Father did his blessy-thing, probably (hopefully) adding a few extra exorcisms given the dilapidated state of the building.
Keep in mind, Manfred got to the building AFTER Father. When Manfred and his crew opened everything (panels, walls, everything!) they discovered some particularly important electrical stuffs had broken off inside the walls.
It was one of those moments like in a TV show. You know, where the doctor comes out of the operating room and says, “Ma’am, please sit down…” Yeah, Manfred informed me that our building should be a pile of ashes. Even he used the word “miracle.”
If that is not enough to convince you of the power of a good, thorough blessing, I can tell you more.
How about when we purchased our current home? Everything passed inspection, and we subsequently got our home blessed. About 2-weeks later we suddenly lost all hot water and started hearing a baleful noise from our pipes. The plumber was called to investigate.
Unfortunately, our water heater is inconveniently located under our house…at the opposite end of our crawl space from the door, past the HVAC, all our plumbing pipes, and a large pile of siding. I was sitting in the dining room awaiting the verdict when I heard a blood-curdling scream from under the house followed by some scurrying noises and banging around.
The plumber came up and ran into the house yelling for me to turn everything off. He then got on the phone with his supervisor and had a new water heater rushed over because, I kid you not, ours had rust holes all over it. He wasn’t sure how we ever had hot water, let alone passed our home inspection. The word “explosion” was used a few times.
I could go on, but you get the gist. Absolutely take care of your home; that is not in question. However, give yourself peace of mind and get the blessing too! Make sure your home, office, cars, everything is covered spiritually! And, ask for the Latin. The devil hates Latin!
Saint Barbara, pray for us!
