What can I give you today?

Did you ever consider what it is that you are able to hand over to another person? Perhaps not too many people think that the person they are speaking with or just happen to encounter on any given day just may be going through a spiritual deficiency that you alone can remove that deficiency?

Could there be another moment that would present itself to your ability to bless someone who may just happen to confront you not realizing that you have the grace of God waiting to enhance their need?

When Peter and John were walking through the streets of Jerusalem and came across a beggar who was asking for money they stopped and said; “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk. Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong. He leaped up, stood, and walked around, and went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God. (Acts 3: 6 - 8).

Is this the same as what you might be expected to accomplish with a friend or stranger? Not likely, but the essence of bringing to someone needing a spiritual blessing is the same. Neither you nor the person you just prayed over had any idea of the emptiness from a deep desire of healing; the grace from the faith of both will have an eternal moment of God’s Grace.

One day as I was working as an electrician in an elderly couple’s house we got into a discussion about faith and the gentleman told me he had attended the local Protestant seminary and when I told them I was a Catholic deacon and asked them if they wanted a blessing, they were elated. The wife, a Jewish woman, began to cry. I never knew just what grace was handed on to them but I realized that the grace of God had touched the two of them. I never think that offering someone a blessing is a waste of time and accepting the ministry of grace from ordination is a tribute to what Jesus gave us on the Cross; freedom from sin and the inclusion into what we believe as the grace from Christ through his Holy Spirit. They both eagerly accepted what I gave them; a Catholic cleric blessing them not to proselytize them but to share what Christ gave me; Holy Orders.

This is what all of us are endowed with to hand on to friends, relatives and even strangers. It is the gift of giving ourselves to one another in the same essence that God’s Spirit touches us and becomes a guide to find the true way to heaven without stumbling or doubts. We may not believe that when so much is affecting everything we seem to touch or reach for, but it is the human aspirations that allows us to care enough and without questioning the cost to become the shoulders for a lost or questioning human being that is waiting for you or me to save them from a spiritual draught.

Never before I was ordained did I realize the effect my ordination would have upon those I am sent to minister with. But from experience with the Holy Spirit’s grace I have come to know the meaning of ministry with the same type of people that St. Francis found when building his Church; not with bricks and mortar, but with love and grace that comes from Almighty God.

Ralph B. Hathaway