Throwback Thursday: Rite of Home Blessing
Note: This was published January 14, 2022. — Ed.
We Lutherans sometimes fall victim to the “too Catholic” superstition. We are ashamed of our venerable traditions of blessing people and objects, even when they appear in our Small Catechism, such as when Luther instructs us: “bless yourself with the holy cross,” and in the Large Catechism when he encourages the “blessing and thanksgiving at meals” and “the practice of children to cross [German: “segne” - “bless”] themselves when anything monstrous or terrible is seen or heard.” Note that we are not instructed to sheepishly explain to standers-by that we aren’t Roman Catholic, nor is there a soliloquy about how we do this in Christian liberty, that it is optional, an adiaphoron, etc.