In his epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul says a rather astonishing thing when he's talking about our capacity to bless--our capacity to convey God's presence. In a section where he's talking about appropriate speech he says 'let no

evil word come out of your mouth, but only what is good'--he concludes that passage by saying

'that it may give grace to those who hear'. Your words have the capacity to convey God's grace to

another person. That's an amazing thing. You can by your own actions cause the Divine Presence

of God to rest more fully on another human being. That is what it means to give a blessing--to be able to be used

as an agent, as an instrument of God for the blessing of someone else is something that Jesus empowers

all of us to do. In a special way He empowers, for example, parents to bless their kids. In the formal

Roman Ritual Book of Blessings there are blessings that are appropriate for parents to give their kids

because parents have a divine capacity to do that. Its always been interesting to me, sometimes in some

parishes when people are coming forward for Communion, they'll be in line with a Eucharistic Minister,

and the parents will want the Eucharistic Minister to bless their kid. The irony is of course that the Eucharistic Minister has no power to bless. The parent is the one who has the power to bless their child, because the parent has been given that by God. Now if the Eucharist Minister is a priest or a deacon obviously they can do it. But God gives parents a special authority to bless their kids.

But God gives all of us the authority to speak His word. Simple things like 'God bless you', conveys something real in the Kingdom. Similar to when Jesus says if you visit a house and there's a peaceable person there, let your peace rest on that house. Several of the Monastic Orders when they were on their journeys, whenever would enter a house they would always say 'peace be with this house' - with the understanding that the moment they said that in some mysterious way -God responded and His peace would rest on those who were there.

The Gospel also makes the cryptic response that if there isn't a person there like that, then your peace

will come back to you. But the point is that you can convey peace to each other. You can convey God's

blessing to each other. This is a gift we have that is an incredible gift. How many situations do we find

ourselves in the course of a year that are in desperate need of more peace--peace in peoples'

hearts, peace in relationships, peace in circumstances. Jesus empowers us through the grace He's given

us to be that kind of agent, an agent of His love, an agent of His grace, an agent of His peace. That our lips have the capacity to reach out to that power of Calvary, to that power of Pentecost and bring the living presence of Jesus Himself more deeply into somebody's life. That's part of what it means to say that God

uses us as human instruments. It's part of the mystery of the Incarnation itself; Jesus becoming a human

being in order to, as a human being, save us from our sins. Jesus raising up Peter to be His Vicar in the Church. Jesus raising up the priesthood to be the agent whereby He is made manifest in the Church

especially through the sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus constantly using instruments- human instruments, to build the Kingdom. We are those instruments now. In a special way as the Second Vatican Council pointed out that the lay people are the instruments of God to be used for the transformation of the world: the transformation of the market place, the school, the job; wherever. Because wherever you go, God is more specially present, and you have the power to simply convey that presence, even by a word. To simply say 'God bless you', results in God blessing someone. We need to have the courage to use the graces that Jesus has given to us, so that we can in fact be a blessing in all of these circumstances. The great Saints understood that God's presence was with them. People loved to be around them. You read the stories of Padre Pio and St. Francis of Assisi, and St. John Vianney, people mobbed these folks all the time. The same thing happens with Mother Theresa, people just like being around her, because being around her is like being around God. And there is just something of the Divine Presence that rests on them in a special way. But it's nothing that doesn't rest on the rest of us as well, they're just a little more open to letting it happen. Theresa of Calcutta simply chooses God with all of her heart, all of the time. She does not stand in His way. She is transparent to His Spirit. She is an example to us of exactly what we can do if we just let Him out in the same way she does. And when she speaks people hear God. That's a gift. The gift to be able to speak and have people hear that it's God talking. That doesn't mean we have to have this phenomenally complex, systematic, well-orchestrated, theological data base before we open our mouths. That's usually what spooks most of us. Suppose I start talking about Jesus and someone asks me a question I don't know. Then you simply say 'I don't know, but it's probably in the Catechism , so I'll go look it up.' But you can always simply tell people that Jesus loves them, that Jesus has a plan for their life, that there's a Father in heaven who desires to show you His mercy, that there's a Church that has the power to forgive your sins, that there is a banquet where you can receive food for Eternal Life, that you have a Mother in Heaven who intercedes for you constantly. Lots of simple things we can say that could really change people's lives--if we have the courage to say them. If we have the courage to say to Jesus, in the words of Isaiah, 'here I am send me'. Not necessarily in the words of Moses, 'here I am, send my brother'. Jesus sends us out into a world that longs to hear the Good News. A world that is getting more and more fearful, a world that is getting more and more tragic. And yet a world that is on the edge, as the Holy Father says, of a rebirth of evangelization, a great grace, a great pouring out of the power of the Holy Spirit, that many more people would come to know Jesus. Let us plead with Him today that we would be part of what He is doing, that our hearts would be alive with His grace, full of His love, that we would have the courage to proclaim the whole Gospel to bring people more deeply into the Lordship of Jesus, in the power of His Spirit, in the heart of His Church. Let us pray that we too could convey grace to all of those who listen to us, that we would be a St. John the Baptist pointing the way to the Lord. As we receive Him today in His Body and Blood, let us be grateful for this ultimate gift of His power and grace to us. Let us ask Him to take the grace we receive and make us more His instruments. Let us have gratitude for the love He has in shepherding us and ask Him for courage that we too could proclaim His Good News to others.