Blessing of Hymnals: Best Practices?

The Book of Blessings, US edition, provides a brief prayer of blessing for hymnals and service books (reprinted below). It is said in the BoB that this prayer might be used before the introductory rites of Mass or after the general intercessions. There is no specific mention of making the sign of the cross or using holy water.

We will soon begin using Worship, 4th Edition as our hymnal for Sunday Mass (and only for this) at Saint John’s Abbey. GIA has printed a special edition of W4 for us with a supplement of materials we wished to include for our use. (Copyright permissions for our supplemental materials are only for use at St. John’s Abbey, so don’t even ask whether it’s for sale or you can purchase a copy.) I’m wondering how we should bless our new hymnals.

How have you blessed new hymnals? What practices work well, and what advice do you have? I welcome your feedback.

Here’s that blessing prayer:

Lord God of glory,
your Church on earth joins with the choirs of heaven
in giving you thanks and praise.

As we gather to worship you in wonder and awe
may the songs on our lips
echo the music that swells in our hearts.

Bless us as we use these hymnals (service books)
and grant that we may glorify and praise you,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
now and for ever.

R. Amen.

 

Anthony Ruff, OSB

Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a monk of St. John's Abbey. He teaches liturgy, liturgical music, and Gregorian chant at St. John's University School of Theology-Seminary. He is widely published and frequently presents across the country on liturgy and music. He is the author of Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations, and of Responsorial Psalms for Weekday Mass: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter. He does priestly ministry at the neighboring community of Benedictine sisters in St. Joseph.

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25 responses to “Blessing of Hymnals: Best Practices?”

  1. John Kohanski

    Based on the wording of the prayer, it’s a blessing of the people using the books, and not the books themselves, correct? There is already a blessing of the people at the end of Mass, so it’s redundant to use this prayer, especially at the start of Mass.
    Maybe this is a topic for a separate thread, but why is there no longer blessing of ‘things’ especially those used in worship or sacramentals? What has changed that nothing is blessed now but us? I am being completely serious here, as this is quite distressing to me.

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  2. Matthew Hazell

    To call this prayer a “blessing of hymnals” is not at all accurate. If, for example, the sprinkling of holy water were to be done, it would have to be over the people and not the books, since it is the people being blessed. The middle part of the prayer itself, IMO, is overly sappy and saccharine, and yet still bland – I presume it’s an 1980s ICEL original composition?

    Best practice if the aim is to actually bless the hymnals? Use the “blessing of anything” (benedictio ab omnia) from the older Rituale Romanum, either before Mass (preferable if they are going to used at that Mass!) or at/in place of the universal prayer:

    O God, whose word suffices to make all things holy, pour out your blessing + on this object (these objects); and grant that anyone who uses it (them) with grateful heart and in keeping with your law and will, may receive from you, its (their) Maker, health in body and protection of soul by calling on your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. [objects then sprinkled with holy water]

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  3. Adam Booth, C.S.C.

    I thought that when there was no mention of when to make the sign of the cross, you did it at the word “Bless.” If you make your gestures reasonably slowly and don’t speak too slowly, that sign could extend from bless to “these hymnals,” which I think consecrates them to our use nicely.

    After the universal prayer would seem a good time, especially if the petitions are composed with that context in mind. If your congregation is wont to mainly show up before Mass begins, and the hymnals will be used at that service, I could also see it working to have them hold them up for blessing before Mass.

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  4. Dennis Smolarski SJ

    In the Roman Missal, for the Presentation of the Lord, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, there are two forms of blessing prayers to bless the candles/ashes/palms. In each case, the text of one prayer mentions blessing the object, whereas the other prayer mentions blessing the people. So the prayer in the U.S. Book of Blessing seems to be following a pattern that is already in the Missal. I don’t have my Latin edition of the Liber Benedictionum with me, but the Blessing of Hymnals may have been created by the U.S. BCL when the U.S. edition of the Book of Blessings was published.

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  5. Alan Hommerding

    Most of the blessing prayers (especially of objects) in the Book of Blessings tend to follow this pattern of being ultimately aimed at the benefit of the people, as is the translation of the prayer from the Ritual Romanum, above. (Though the RR does explicitly bless the object, then ultimately the blessing as being for the benefit of the people.)
    At a Society for Catholic Liturgy meeting, somebody raised this point with Cardinal George (likely when he was head of the bishops’ liturgy committee) – that this seemed to be a denial of the objects themselves being ontologically changed by the act of blessing. IIRC, many/most (?) of the newly-composed prayers particular to the US were written by Gabe Huck, though the book itself is an ICEL project. Ron Krisman would know more about this.
    I would vote/opt for doing the blessing as part of the Universal Prayer; it wouldn’t be too difficult to compose the intercessions for that day using musical imagery.

    Reply
    1. Paul Inwood

      @Alan Hommerding:

      And that is precisely the point. The objects are not ontologically changed. Dennis Smolarski has pointed out what I have been telling my workshop participants for a considerable time. Our theology has shifted from a magic spell over an object to calling down a blessing upon people (yes, I know I am overstating it for the purpose of emphasis). The dichotomy between the prayers of blessing in the Missal does no more than show that we are still a Church in transition between childhood and (perhaps!) adolescence. Eventually the prayers that bless things rather than people will disappear.

      Many people, still in a theological childhood, think that when a priest blesses their rosary, something akin to transubstantiation takes place. If the pope blesses it, somehow the object is even holier than when blessed by a mere priest. All of this is a simple misunderstanding.

      I have previously mentioned on this forum a priest friend of mine who, when asked “Please, Father, will you bless my rosary?”, always answers “No!” — and then, after a pause, adds “but I’ll ask God to”. That helps us to understand that it is not about us uttering magic words over an object, but about asking God to bring blessings on people who use it.

      When we bless an object, we ask God to bless those who will use it and who will, we devoutly hope, grow holier through using it. In effect, we ask God to make sure that the object has an effect upon those who use it.

      The object is not changed, but hopefully we will be. It would be possible to say that an object assumes a certain holiness through continued use, but this is far from an ontological change.

      Reply
      1. Dillon Barker

        @Paul Inwood: Two points need to be addressed. First, how do you distinguish “adolescent” faith from “childish” faith? Is this not inherently an ad hominem distinction? I.e., isn’t it true that one cannot make these distinctions without accusing those you oppose of being childish? I’ll leave aside our Lord’s reference to only those wiht child-like faith entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

        Secondly: do you or do you not believe that God answers the prayers we ask? In other words, if I pray for God to bless a book, can I not, in good faith, believe that God’s Holy Spirit will come and set the book aside for holy use? It would seem to me that one must deny either prayer’s efficacy or the Spirit’s power to deny, as you seem to do, that it is even possible for the book to be changed.

        I hope you’ll respond to these two points.

      2. Paul Inwood

        @Dillon Barker:

        Dillon,

        At no point did I accuse anyone of being childish or adolescent. (And of course there is a difference between “childish” and “child-like”.)

        What I said was that I see us moving as a Church from childhood (the first two millennia or so) towards the next phase of existence. That makes no pejorative judgement of the kind you imply. It simply states a fact. Theologically, today we are much more sophisticated than the generations that went before us. Many more lay people have theology degrees than in previous times. A proportion of lay people are in fact theologically better educated than the pastors who minister to them. Catholics have begun to come of age, if you like, in the way that we are able to think about our faith, rather than relying on what they have been told or repeating catechism definitions parrot-fashion.

        But you are right, there are still some whose theology borders on fundamentalism. That is what I was referring to when I spoke about those who still believe that blessing an object in some way transforms its very substance, making the blessing somewhat akin to a magic spell.

        That is very different from believing that the Holy Spirit will “set the book aside for holy use” (of course we hope and pray that this will be so!) and has absolutely nothing to do with our belief that God answers our prayers (God certainly answers our prayers, even if not always in the way we would wish!).

        I do not believe that the book itself changes, and I do not believe that that is what we pray for when we bless it. I do believe that our dedicating the book to service of the Christian community makes it special for us, and that is right to consecrate books and other objects for service and to show them respect when we have done so. In this way we are helped to pray continually that those objects will have a positive spiritual influence on (be a source of grace for) those with whom and for whom they are used. But let’s try not to say any longer that there is a change in the nature of the book itself.

      3. Alan Hommerding

        @Paul Inwood: To be clear, when I was recounting the Book of Blessings discussion from the SCL meeting, it was only for that purpose – to recount it. I was reporting, not advocating.

      4. Paul Inwood

        @Alan Hommerding:
        Alan, yes, I did realize that. Sorry if it was not clear.

  6. Paul Inwood

    So, continuing from my post #6, consider the traditional Grace before Meals, which notably starts “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts….” Yes, the people are blessed before the food.

    A recent (sung) Grace before Meals has the following text:

    God of all creation,
    you give us this food.
    Bless those who prepared it,
    and those who will share it,
    and those who have none.”

    Here we see a structure similar to the Berakah prayers, where we thank God for food and ask God to make sure that it has an effect upon us spiritually (i.e. that we will not only be blessed in the realization that “All things come from God”, but will in our turn be transformed after the bread and wine have been transformed in the EP).

    Reply
  7. Matthew Hazell

    @Paul Inwood (#7): Yes, the people are blessed before the food.

    In the traditional grace before meals, though, the food is still blessed (Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…), unlike in your example of a recent composition.

    This is my main issue with De benedictionibus: the thoroughly biblical notion of blessing objects in addition to people is, regrettably, largely missing.

    Reply
  8. Peter Rehwaldt

    I’ve been part of various “blessing of the hymnals,” and it seems odd to simply speak a blessing for a collection of community songs. A well-chosen hymn, sung following the prayer, is a good way to extend the blessing in a manner befitting the books.

    Reply
  9. Kevin Vogt

    It’s strikes me as wrong to presume that older notions of blessing of objects was merely magic or superstition. It is hard to imagine how our cosmic-conscious forebears before the Enlightenment were themselves changed by the blessing of objects, whether this was a calling forth of the full power of their inherent qualities or some sort of ontological transformation. Perhaps post-Enlightenment minds might be immune to the effects of object-blessing and require a recasting of the blessing prayers to be explicitly directed toward effects on people.

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  10. Jeffery BeBeau

    In the revision of the Book of Blessings we see one of the tensions that has emerged from the reform of the liturgical rites after Vatican II.

    In the OT God blesses all life for its extension and well-being and humans participate in this blessing by accepting responsibility for the created order; people bless people as a sign of the common participation in God’s blessing; people bless God as a response to God’s blessing and as prayer for their participation in God’s blessing (e.g. Ps. 103 & 134).

    There was always a strong connection between blessing and thanksgiving. A split occurred and led to the tenancy to see a need to bless “profane” objects and has to be made holy before sacred use.

    Perhaps in keeping with the change found in the change of theology in the Book of Blessings we need to once again realize that everything that comes from God is holy and released for our use in grateful praise and thanksgiving. Further, in linking blessing with thanksgiving, we will strengthen the connection between a blessing and the Eucharist. While not every blessing is the Eucharist, every blessing is eucharistic and finds it fulfillment and completion in the Eucharist, the central act of Christian worship.

    I am indebted to the book Occasional Celebrations of ACC which explores the evolution of the concept of blessings in its introduction to the section on blessings.

    In relation to the use of the sign of the cross over the objects to be blessed, the CDWDS has clarified if not explicit, the use of the word “bless” in the text of the blessing indicated that ministers may make the sign of the cross.

    Here is a link to the Latin original:

    http://notitiae.ipsissima-verba.org/pdf/aas-2002-684-684.pdf

    If you follow the link below and scroll down, you can find that English translation:

    http://notitiae.ipsissima-verba.org/

    Reply
  11. Gerard Flynn

    Both God and inanimate things on the one hand, and, on the other, humans and things can be the object of blessing in the tradition. The berakah blesses God and at the same time blesses the bread and wine.
    Some other examples include these two:
    “The blessing cup that we bless is it not a communion of the blood of the Christ?” (1 Cor. 10.16)
    “He blessed and broke the loaves.” (Mark 6.41)

    Reply
  12. Carlo Argoti

    We recently bought new hymnals and I adapted the blessing where we processed in silence, began the Mass as usual with the sign of the cross, the greeting then immediately proceeding with the blessing having the congregation raise their hymnals towards the altar. Then the presider invited the people to sing a hymn of praise from the new hymnal with the Glory to God immediately following.

    Reply
  13. Rod Hall

    Mr. Inwood: I find your comment in number 6 offensive. Your tone is patronizing and condescending — and this is unmitigated by your subsequent comments.

    “[A] magic spell over an object”…”a Church in transition between childhood”…”still in a theological childhood”…”Eventually the prayers that bless things rather than people will disappear.” These are words of contempt.

    It is disappointing that, rather than simply express the positive points you do for a forward looking theology of blessing, you denigrate those who hold a different theology or as if those of previous eras are creatures to be pitied for their benighted thoughts. Whoever I have been in dialogue with across the decades, I have seen how the use of terms that are seen as pejorative and dismissive to any party of the dialogue is almost invariably counterproductive. Indeed, their use can cause such harm as to effectively end what could otherwise be a helpful and fruitful discussion.

    I regret to find such ugly comments as what you wrote on a page for which I have had respect and enjoyed visiting on a regular basis since I discovered the page during the revision of the Roman Missal.

    Your words have certainly had one dramatic effect: They have greatly diminished the esteem I held for you.

    Reply
  14. Matthew Hazell

    @Paul Inwood (#17): Theologically, today we are much more sophisticated than the generations that went before us.

    A rather questionable, thoroughly modern assumption… and one that, the more I read, the less I believe is even close to being true.

    Reply
    1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
      Anthony Ruff, OSB

      @Matthew Hazell:
      It is a thoroughly modern assumption. But we live in a thoroughly modern (post-modern, actually, but let it pass for now) world. The Enlightenment really happened. Historical methods, scientific methods, all these are now part of how we think as humans.

      The Second Vatican Council happened because the leading lights in our church – theologians, scholars, bishops – realized that we had a problem and we had to deal with it. It was a problem a couple centuries in the making. It just wouldn’t work anymore to live in the world of Pius IX and condemn everything modern. Too much was being learned in the fields such as biblical scholarship (cf. Divino afflante Spiritu, 1943) and liturgical scholarship (cf. Pius X instituting commission to examine historical basis for reform of missal and breviary).

      So yes, we do know more than past generations. That’s not necessarily an arrogant claim. It’s just an acknowledgement of what has been happening in most every field of scholarly inquiry for many, many generations. The reformers who are making the best of modern scholarship are building upon the work of many others. Because the Catholic Church tried to resist modern reality for so long, it was inevitable that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council brought in a certain amount of rupture. If the church authorities had been in touch with their own best theologians (as in the Middle Ages), a natural evolution could have ensued a couple centuries before Vatican II. Catch-up was bound to be messy.

      Are there mistakes and distortions and errors in modernity? Of course, all over the place. So jump in, affirm the modern world, and start making wise judgments about what comes from God’s Spirit and what doesn’t.

      The question at root is whether one accepts V2. Implicit in the Council, and explicit at times, is the acknowledgement that we now have knowledge available to use that previous generations did not. To fight that is really to fight the Second Vatican Council.

      Reply
      1. Scott Smith

        @Anthony Ruff, OSB:

        The question at root is whether one accepts V2.

        The problem with this accusation, is that the progressive tendance robs it of its force. Where a more progressive person does not follow some part of VII, they don’t consider themselves to be rejecting it, but just that their theology has further changed and developed.

        And you can’t, in charity, hold others to its substance more than you would hold yourself. We know more now than at the time of the Council – On a progressive view therefore further developments can’t be prevented from tilting right (particularly as many so called traditionalist positions are as novel and modern as anything else going).

        If VII could cause rupture, rupture can be caused with it.

  15. Matthew Hazell

    @Fr Ruff (#20): What a shame about all those straw men!

    Undoubtedly we know more about the history of the Bible and liturgy than previous generations; I’m not denying that, though how much it applies to the average person/non-specialist is up for debate (especially when one considers the general decline in biblical literacy in the West). But Mr Inwood’s claim was that we are theologically more sophisticated, and necessarily so because we happen to come after everyone else who has ever lived. That good ol’ myth of progress.

    It’s the same sort of logic that dogmatically insists that, for example, John’s Gospel had to have been written later than the others because its Christology is more developed, i.e. it’s more theologically sophisticated. If there’s anything postmodernity has shown us, it’s that this line of reasoning is nonsense, dependent on an assumption about “modern man” that just isn’t true.

    Lay people in the West might have more degrees and (notionally) more knowledge than in times gone by, but that certainly doesn’t mean we’re more sophisticated or have begun to “come of age”.

    Reply
    1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
      Anthony Ruff, OSB

      @Matthew Hazell:
      Hi Matthew,

      I’m sorry I set up straw men but hope I didn’t. Help me understanding you better.

      I meant to say that we now know not just a lot of little factums and information, but that there has been a large cultural shift brought about by historical methodologies, & this massively calls into question and delegitimizes anti-modern theological methodology. (How much or little average people know about this, or Scripture, is an entirely different question. I’m talking at the level of ideas discussed by scholars and intellectuals.)

      This is progress. Not necessarily the ‘myth of progress’ you mock, for of course modernity brings a complicated mix of blessings and curses. Once you sort out the bad things, there remains a fundamental historical trajectory which Christianity simply must account for & respond to as the framework within which to proclaim our faith. To do otherwise is, broadly speaking, fundamentalism – which can be crass or quite sophisticated while still being at root fundamentalism. Vatican II made this move, broadly speaking, and – I don’t mean to make an accusation but I’m reacting to your writings – I’m not sure to what extent you accept that.

      I suppose some Scripture scholars are too dogmatic, but most I know have solid methodologies and their method allows for self-questioning and further insights. I wouldn’t mock their insight that theological sophistication, like doctrine, develops. I love Aquinas but I sure don’t see that language in the New Testament. The progression is messy & not totally linear, but progression happens.

      I don’t think ‘post-modernity’ shows that modern ways of thinking are ‘nonsense.’ For Christians, faith & reason work together, so we have to be exceedingly cautious about rejecting reason, eg in the guise of modern historical methodology.

      The main question remains – how does Christianity relate to modern intellectual progress? V2 is paradigmatic, I think.

      Pax,
      awr

      Reply
      1. Fritz Bauerschmidt Avatar
        Fritz Bauerschmidt

        @Anthony Ruff, OSB:

        The main question remains – how does Christianity relate to modern intellectual progress? V2 is paradigmatic, I think.

        But don’t you think V2 has shown itself a bit too sanguine about that progress? I take it that Matthew’s appeal to postmodernity is related to the fact that V2 seemed vary confident that, though the modern world had rejected God, a bridge to modernity could be build on the basis of a shared conception of “man”—thus the anthropological starting point of Gaudium et Spes. But even as the ink was still wet on G&S, writers like Foucault were pointing out that “man” is not a given but a construct, and it seems in hindsight that the “man” of G&S was not a universal notion but in fact something quite parochial: European, male, white, etc. And the progress of that “man” was often bought at the cost of those on the margins.

        So I take it that Matthew is saying that we not only have some reason to be suspicious concerning claims about progress, but also those about the homogenous “modernity” to which the Church must seek to speak and from which the Church must learn. Is the perspective of the white, male, European biblical scholar more normative than that of the poor woman living in a favela in Rio who wants to have her rosary blessed and who will treat it as somehow more sacred after it has been blessed than it was before? Perhaps in some contexts, but surely not in all. Isn’t there an unschooled wisdom of ordinary believers that can in certain circumstances outstrip that of the modern scholar? It was not simply because philosophy had not yet made sufficient progress that Aquinas wrote, “no one of the philosophers before the coming of Christ could, through his own powers, know God and the means necessary for salvation as well as any old woman since Christ’s coming knows Him through faith.”

  16. Matthew Hazell

    @Fritz Bauerschmidt (#24): I would largely agree with your post, though my own honest assessment of Gaudium et spes is a little less… diplomatic than yours! IMO, GS was out of date before the ink was dry on the Malines draft, let alone the final text. Firstly, because of its “outside-in” application of the inductive method, going from anthropology to Christology; secondly, because GS links Christian hope far too closely to modern ideas of “progress”.

    I’d also say that, though GS is a document of an ecumenical council, there’s nothing dogmatically binding about its approach to the “modern world”.

    @Fr Ruff (#23): [T]here has been a large cultural shift brought about by historical methodologies, & this massively calls into question and delegitimizes anti-modern theological methodology

    Does it, in and of itself, though? There’s no intrinsic reason why modern methodologies should “de-legitimise” those of past generations. At least, not without a thorough examination of any given methodology’s presuppositions and assumptions that lie beneath the surface, a “criticism of the criticism”, if one will (in terms of biblical studies, c.f. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict”; also Luke Timothy Johnson, “What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship?”).

    Otherwise, we broadly agree. 🙂

    And if we rephrase your question as “how does Christianity relate to modern intellectual thought?”, avoiding (if only temporarily) that vexatious word “progress”, then I think we can also agree that Vatican II is paradigmatic – though we may still disagree on how and in what way it is!

    (And we are waaaay off the original topic here – for which I apologise!)

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