What sacred texts need to be blessed?

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PazzoGrande

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As I understand it, the Bible is intrinsically holy and does not need a blessing, like a relic.

How about the Gospels book (and metallic cover), breviary, missals, etc.?
 
PazzoGrande said:
As I understand it, the Bible is intrinsically holy and does not need a blessing, like a relic.

How about the Gospels book (and metallic cover), breviary, missals, etc.?
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I don’t know if there is any official teaching on this but: When I now got my breviary, I took it to a priest and asked him to show me how to use it.

Before showing me how to use it, he blessed it first. So there you go, breviaries can be blessed, but I don’t know much more than that.
 
The Book of Blessings, USA edition has in Chapter 39, “Order for the Blessing of Articles for Liturgical Use”. Here it has: “1343. It is proper to bless other articles used for liturgical celebration: the ciborium or pyx, the monstrance, the vestments worn by ordained ministers, such linens as the corporal and altar cloths, and hymnals and service books (Sacramentary, Lectionary for Mass, etc.).”

Sometimes a bible is used in the liturgy. For example, in the ceremony for the institution of readers it has:

“7. Each candidate goes to the bishop, who gives him the Bible, saying:
Take this book of holy Scripture …”

(From The Rites Volume Two, Liturgical Press, 1991, ISBN: 0-8146-6037-1, page 106.)

Given that it is clearly appropriate to bless a Lectionary, I have difficulty accepting that it is not appropriate to bless a bible.
 
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