Blessing of the Animals on the Feast Day of St. Francis

October 4, 2009

I presented this homily at the Blessing of the Animals ceremony in celebration of the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi at Columcille Megalith Park on the above date.  

         Upon receiving an invitation to serve as “Bless-or” for today’s ceremony the question immediately popped into my mind:  “Who am I to bless anything?”   Before I got myself into too much of a dither I consulted an online dictionary to see just what I was up against.  I read there that a blessing (or the bestowing of such) is the infusion of something with holiness, divine will, or one’s hope or approval.

         The first part of this definition gave me pause.  To bestow attributes that, to my mind, the recipient already possesses is at best a futile exercise in redundancy, and at worst an act of arrogance.  The second part of the definition, the conferring of one’s hope or approval, I found more satisfactorily in accord with my own philosophy of the exercise at hand.  I could live with a public declaration of approval for our animal relatives, both wild and domestic. 

         Then, I read a bit further and learned, to my utter delight, that a blessing is also the collective noun for a gathering of unicorns.  Immediately before my mind’s eye appeared a group of these mythological creatures as beautiful white horses, each with a singular cranial horn draped by a flowing golden forelock.  One more click over to Wikipedia disabused me of that image by informing me that the traditional unicorn actually has the body of a horse, the beard of a Billy goat, the tail of a lion and, unlike horses, cloven hooves.  It is, in short, an amalgam of the animals of the earth. 

Marianna Mayer, a children’s writer, observed in her work, The Unicorn and the Lake, that

“The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears.  In the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful.  He could only be captured by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison.”

Myths are basic truths, nearly always about human nature.  The unicorn’s attributes represent the best qualities of human nature.  He is a beast contrived, not from channeling feelings of dread, but rather out of a reaching for what we desire in humankind.

Moreover, it occurred to me that the unicorn’s horn is a metaphor for the mysterious bond that we share with all non-human creatures of the earth, but particularly those whom we have taken under our wings; those who are elevated to family member status – our pets. That bond is sustaining in the lives of many people whom I visit with on a daily basis.  The horn of the unicorn is the bond that neutralizes the poison of human failure and limitation.  It is relied upon by the lonely worker who is greeted by his loving dog each evening when he arrives to an otherwise empty home.  It is the last fortress for a pet-loving child who dwells in a household of stress fomented by bickering parents on the path to divorce.  The sick, the elderly, the shut-in finds solace in a purring lap cat and joy in its antics.  The active and healthy celebrate the bond as they run with their charge through the park on an autumn day or stroke his ears while watching TV at night.  Examples of the human-pet bond are endless. 

Consider also the observation of playful otters sliding down a water sluice, a craggy turtle ascending a half submerged log, an eagle banking and soaring along a brilliant blue sky.  For the creatures of the wild sustain us as well and feed our souls with awe and delight. 

Francisco of Assisi recognized and celebrated the mystical union we share with our animal relatives and it is that union, that bond, that we celebrate, and bestow our blessings upon here today.