While we're about out dramatic increase in blogging--today we have three!--we (your humble Gottes-eds) have also been talking about a regular Throwback Thursday feature, a Blast from the Past.  So here's your first TBT post, this one from 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 2006

A Priestly Blessing

I trust Father Hollywood won't mind if I paste his belated reply to an earlier post here, as I find it most helpful, and something with which I heartily concur. Father H., I like the way you think:

"I realize this post is delinquent, I had meant to chime in earlier. A benefit of living in a heavily Roman Catholic area is that people seek out the blessins of the clergy. They "get" just what you're saying about the priestly blessing and the authority given to Christ's ministers.

"Strangers will come up to me and ask me to pray for them and bless them - even with my wife and son in tow (obviously, I'm not a Roman priest).

"This happens even more frequently when I'm in a cassock. To those who think the 'adiaphora' of clerical garb is useless, or even worse than that, negative - you need to put on a cassock and stroll around the neighborhood.

"Big guys with tattoos and little old ladies will come to you with pained looks on their faces and ask you to give them the blessing of the Lord Jesus - whom they know you represent and in Whose stead you stead.

"That's evangelism without a program, slogan, balloons, or even the letters 'TM' in fine print. "

Amen to that.