The blessing that we hear in Numbers today is such a beautiful blessing that I’d like to reflect on that in terms of the hope for this New Year.
The blessing begins with may “the Lord bless you and keep you.” For each of these phrases I looked up the original Hebrew just to see what some of the other to see what some of the nuances were to the words.
MAY THE LORD BLESS YOU: What this means deeply is that the Lord not only bless you, but He wants to lavish His grace on you this year. That He wants to esteem you, that He wants to speak well of you, that He wants you to know just how beloved you are to Him. He wants to bless you.
MAY THE LORD KEEP YOU: What is the Hebrew for keep? Keep means not only to keep and hold, but to protect safely from any danger: physical, emotional, or spiritual. The Lord wants to keep you from that. It also means to keep you close to himself. In this New Year, He wants you to be kept close to Him. May the Lord bless you and keep you.
MAY HE SHINE HIS FACE UPON YOU: Not only when He shines His face upon us, but He wants us to be filled with that same light that He has for us. That us shining forth, bring that light into the world. The shining forth is also an enkindling that He wants to set a fire within us. He wants to set us ablaze so that we can shine throughout the world. Bless you and keep you. May the Lord shine his face upon you.
To see the face of God is to actually experience what we will see in heaven. In the Hebrew scriptures, no one could see the face of God and live because it was so powerful that we wouldn’t be able to contain ourselves. And yet the Lord, in this new year, He wants to shine his face upon you. The Father wants to talk to you face-to- face. He wants to see you face-to-face.
Like we hear in the reading, God wants to lavish his love upon us. So, allow yourselves to enter into that contemplatively, to gaze upon the face of God. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He shine His face upon you and give you peace.
The peace that He gives is beyond all understanding. It’s a peace that we can’t produce ourselves, but it’s a peace that is a gift. And that’s the gift that we all desire. This peace is not only peace, peace in our own hearts, but peace that will radiate through our families, through our parish, through our world. This is a deep and profound peace that only God can give.
His desire is to bless you this New Year. His desire is to shine upon you with love, to shower His grace upon you, to hold you, to protect you, to show you His face and to give you peace.
As we begin this New Year, let us just be grateful as we celebrate the Eucharist for this amazing, wonderful relationship we have with God and what He wants to share with us.
