Q: I have a question. I think it was last fall around the time of the Season of Creation that I came upon a reference, I think it was a blessing of water that said something like “… bless this creature, water …” I can’t remember if it was in English, Spanish, or Latin. I remember looking it up in one of the other languages and found that the word “creature” had been omitted in the alternative language.
Now, I can’t find that wording about “creature.” I’ve been looking at Missal, Book of Blessing, Rite of Baptism.
You are great at liturgical trivia. Do you know where these words “creature” and “water” are connected in any of these languages?
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A: I’m not finding it in English exactly that way, but in Latin, the connection is made in the blessing of water that you find in the missal on Easter Sunday #46 and in the Order of Baptism of Children #54: creaturam aquæ, which is rendered in English as “water, your creation.”
The Latin word does mean “creature” or “created thing”, but in English we think of “creatures” as animate beings, not inanimate objects. I’m sure that’s why the translation ended the way it did.