Q: During an ordination here in Africa, I witnessed a very emotional moment. After the ordination, the hands of the new priest were gently tied with a cloth. Then he went to his parents and gently knelt before them, they untied his hands and then, he gave them his first priestly blessing. It was my first time to see this. After checking in the ritual of ordination, I could not find this. Did this ever happen in the history of this sacrament or it is a local creativity?
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A: What you saw was a blend of many old customs: liturgical, cultural, and canonical.
In the preconciliar ordination rite, after anointing the priest’s hands with the oil of catechumens—not chrism, the bishop bound them with a cloth, the maniturgium, to absorb the excess oil. A custom developed in which the new priest later gave that cloth to his mother, so that, after she died, it could be placed within her hands in her coffin—as if she were to present it to the Lord at the Judgment as evidence that she was a mother of a priest.
Also in the past, the faithful could obtain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions by receiving a blessing from a newly ordained priest. That no longer pertains. An indulgence may now be received by devoutly attending the priest’s first Mass. It has been customary in many cultures for the priest to give his first blessing to his parents or to his bishop. And many of the faithful stand in line to receive the new priest’s blessing, but the indulgence is no longer there.
Personally, I am not a strong proponent of these customs. It is not appropriate to reinstitute gestures and objects that the Holy See has set aside with the liturgical reform. At my ordination, we followed the rubrics that had discontinued the use of the maniturgium (and the oil of catechumens), and my classmates and I rubbed the chrism into our hands, which, for me, was much more meaningful then rubbing it off with a cloth.
As to the maniturgium after the ordination–again my personal testimony—my mother and father were proud of all six of their kids. My brothers and sisters are so extraordinary that after her death, Mom could have testified that she was the mother of any one of them to ease her access to heaven.
And I don’t favor interrupting the ordination liturgy with a blessing when the most important blessing is the one the bishop gives at the end of the Mass. Blessing parents is a lovely thing to do, but the liturgy of ordination does not make room for it, though one could argue that the Book of Blessings calls for some blessings to conclude the Universal Prayer at Mass, so why not add one here? From the liturgical perspective, in my view, it’s out of place.
For more, see my book, Present for God’s Call.
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