Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Every Child Is Blessed
“I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.” John 15:15
We are all blessed in our very creation, and this blessing never leaves. Our challenge is to claim our “original blessing” as children of the One who gave it to us. We may have been wounded by what is know as original sin, but we are healed by our original blessing. The original blessing, the unconditional love of God, was present in God’s mind and heart long before our conception. It touches us from before our beginnings until after our deaths. It embraces us forever. Each of us is “a blessed one.” That is our primary identity.
Every time we take bread, bless it, break it, and give it, we summarize the whole movement of Divine Love. Jesus also takes (chooses) us, blesses us, breaks us with all our undeserved suffering, and gives us for others. Before we are broken we are blessed. We are not broken because of fault but because we are blessed sons and daughters, like Jesus. Our brokenness allows us to be given in solidarity with all others in the world, just as bread is broken and given to many. We constantly see Jesus doing this: he takes, he blesses, he breaks and he gives. That’s what he does. Let us not forget that. Like Jesus, we also are taken, blest, broken and given, because, like Jesus, we are beloved sons and daughters from our very beginning.
- Thank you, Lord, for creating me out of love.
Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son by Henri J. M. Nouwen