Blessing food

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Holy Week always gets me thinking back to the days when I was growing up. I came from a pretty traditional Catholic upbringing. Anyway, every Holy Saturday, my Mom would send us down to the church and one of the priest would bless our basket of food that we would be eating on Easter. Usually this would be a small sampling that would include things like rye bread, hard boiled eggs, ham, ect…

Are there any parishes that still have this tradition?

ps…to us kids, the blessed food always tasted a little different than the unblessed food…
 
Our Byzantine church does this. At least I have been told they do, and it’s in the bulletin for the Saturday vigil Liturgy (we can only have services on Saturday evening, since the church is shared with a Roman Catholic parish).

I will be using a large wicker basket and hopefully will put in our Easter ham, some hardboiled eggs, bread–if get over this cold in time I will be making artos and some prosphora, which my children love to eat–and I found some lovely gold-foil-wrapped chocolate rabbits and lambs to put in for the kids. I may put in the Easter candy for the egg hunt, as well, and maybe a jar of horseradish.

We will also hopefully be making a Pascha candle to add to the basket for blessing. 🙂
 
SimonX said:
Holy Week always gets me thinking back to the days when I was growing up. I came from a pretty traditional Catholic upbringing. Anyway, every Holy Saturday, my Mom would send us down to the church and one of the priest would bless our basket of food that we would be eating on Easter. Usually this would be a small sampling that would include things like rye bread, hard boiled eggs, ham, ect…

Are there any parishes that still have this tradition?

ps…to us kids, the blessed food always tasted a little different than the unblessed food…
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This is, as I understand it, mainly an Eastern tradition; my husband is a Ruthenian Catholic and his Byzantine parish always did this. I understand that it is also common in Polish families/parishes.

Interestingly, our RC parish is also offering this on Holy Saturday morning to anyone who wants to bring food to be blessed. I believe it is the first time they have done this;it is a huge parish, encompassing all sorts of ethnicities, so this is quite nice, I think.
 
How very cool regarding both posts…I think this is probably mostly an ethnic think now that you’ve brought it up. I grew up in a Croation parish, so that would explain the eastern bent.
 
Our parish does this on Thanksgiving. There is one mass Thanksgiving morning, and people are invited to bring the wine and bread that they will be serving later in the day to be blessed.
 
my parish always let children bring their Easter baskets to be blessed during Mass on Easter Sunday. Similar, but different I guess.
 
our little parish here is having a food blessing on saturday.
 
My parish is doing it at noon on Saturday. We aren’t really an ethnic parish, so I guess we break the mold a bit.
 
This is traditional for Polish families as well. All of the parishes I’ve attended in the Detroit area do this on Holy Saturday morning.

(The Easter bunny always brought our baskets on Saturday so we could take them to be blessed. I really never questioned why he came early for us; the bunny just knows these things I suppose 🙂
 
My parish will be blessing food Holy Saturday from 8am to 2pm every hour on the hour!

We are blessed with a Polish priest (the parish also has the extraordinary form of Mass available). Throughout the year there is blessing of various articles at Mass - candles at the feast of the Presentation, bread and wine for the Thanksgiving table, icons of Our Lady (I don’t remember what feast that was).

It’s awesome! As a convert, I love the availability of all the devotions.
 
😊 I had no idea that you guys in the US didn’t have the food blessing as a tradition!

Here, everyone brings baskets with food to the Easter Vigil or early morning masses. And I mean EVERYBODY, even non-religious people. it’s a very long tradition.
and then families eat their breakfast together.
actually, it’s the only breakfast during the year that I eat with my family 😃
 
Come to Chicago, lots of parishes are having blessings of food on Holy Saturday. In fact, we have 3 designated times. One will include our bishop doing the blessing. Happy Easter everyone!🙂
 
mahalia said:
😊 I had no idea that you guys in the US didn’t have the food blessing as a tradition!

Here, everyone brings baskets with food to the Easter Vigil or early morning masses. And I mean EVERYBODY, even non-religious people. it’s a very long tradition.
and then families eat their breakfast together.
actually, it’s the only breakfast during the year that I eat with my family 😃
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Both my Grandparents came Croatia (a very long time ago), so this is a tradition from the parish I grew up in that I miss.

Thanks for responding all…
 
Our Latin parish has a blessing of the easter baskets on Holy Saturday. I assume this will mainly be kid’s baskets (we’ve not been to it since we just joined this parish last year), but I imagine a basket like you described would also be blessed.
 
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