Blessing in the Catholic Church

In the Catholic Church, a blessing is a rite consisting of a ceremony and prayers performed in the name and with the authority of the Church by a duly qualified minister by which persons or things are sanctified as dedicated to divine service or by which certain marks of divine favour are invoked upon them. In a wider sense blessing has a variety of meanings in the sacred writings:

• Synonymous with praise; thus the Psalmist, "I will bless the Lord at all times; praise shall be always in my mouth."^[1]
• A wish or desire that all good fortune, especially of a spiritual or supernatural kind, may go with the person or thing, as the Psalmist says, "Blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee".^[2]
• The sanctification or dedication of a person or thing to some sacred purpose; e.g., Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it....^[3]
• A gift, as when Naaman addresses Eliseus: "Now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant".^[4]