MANILA, Philippines—Some people go to a priest to have their new house or car blessed. Others are happy enough if a priest blesses their rosaries. But Msgr. Jose Clemente Ignacio has found a new breed of supplicants—people desperate for jobs who ask him to bless their resumés.
Ignacio finds nothing wrong with such requests, especially in a country where, according to the National Statistics Office, there are almost 3 million people without jobs as of last January, with 7.1 million others underemployed.
Most of those people who have come to him to bless their resumés were fresh graduates in search of good jobs, said Ignacio, the rector of Quiapo church, or the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene.
“It’s their right to make an appeal to God. Based on our experience, many prayers have been answered,” Ignacio said in a recent media interview.
Such acts of blessing are a “form of a prayer” and a “conferment of God’s grace,” Ignacio said.
Woe to evil spirits!
Blessing objects usually involves sprinkling holy water on them. It is common belief among Filipino Catholics that having priests bless objects intimately related to them would imbue the objects with an aura of sacredness.
When a priest blesses an object, God is asked to bestow special graces on the object and on those who will make use of the blessed object, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
The blessed object can drive away evil spirits, the encyclopedia said. In the case of a rosary or a cross, the object can protect the bearer from sin and may also be used to obtain temporal favors, such as a house.
Not automatic
But Ignacio also reminded those who sought God’s blessings that way that while prayers were bound to be answered, it would depend “on God how He would fulfill your prayers.”
“Sometimes there’s a better plan for us,” he said.
Legazpi Bishop Joel Baylon, head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Youth, said the Church saw nothing wrong about the faithful, particularly the young ones, asking for their resumés to be blessed.
“There’s no problem with such kind of an attitude,” Baylon said. “But there must also be perseverance on the part of the person because answers to prayers are not automatic.”
Baylon also said that God’s help could come in many forms.
“The help of the Lord is not limited to these material things,” he said.
Jocelyn Uy, Inquirer.net
