Don't Neglect the Blessing of Animals

How blessing animals disrupts us toward the gospel's cosmic claims

As a priest, it is my calling to proclaim the gospel, so on October 4th — the feast day of St. Francis — I’ll bless my parishioners and neighbors’ so-called "fur babies.”

Cavapoos, greyhounds, mutts, and maybe even some guinea pigs and their owners will receive a blessing in the triune name. Dirty, jumpy paws will stain my white alb, and I’ll love each minute of it. I’ll pray that both owner and their beloved pets may enjoy life together and find joy with the God who created them.

It’s not strange to think, “Shouldn’t pastors be doing something better with their time than praying over designer golden doodles?”

Since blessing animals is often limited to liturgical churches, the practice leaves many Christians surprised or uncomfortable. Onlookers at the dog park crank their necks in curiosity. And that’s partly the point.

A Peculiar Practice for the Gospel

The strength of this practice is its peculiarity. Because the Blessing of Animals is a bit out of the norm for a church activity, it serves as a fresh wake-up call to the strange and thrilling creational claims in the Christian gospel.

When folks at the dog park see hands laid in prayer on an old golden receiver, the image and act disrupt the status quo. Marking a moment to bless animals is an opportunity to savor the remnants of the Edenic ideal and long for God’s restoration of all things.

The blessing of the animals traces its origins to St Francis of St. Assisi. For Francis, humans and animals share a familial bond as beings fashioned by the wisdom of the Creator, and Francis lived as though this was actually true. Nature, to Francis, is not our mother, despite recent claims from Apple keynotes. Nature is our sister, for we share the same Father.

Molded by this truth, Francis saw the sun, moon, and animals as our siblings in creation. He delighted in creation — especially animals — because of our shared source of their being, God himself.

Blessing to Heal Forgetfulness

Where I reside—a primarily progressive city with many accomplished and affluent folks—it seems people know how to delight in their pets. What’s missing is a reference to the Creator who fashioned our delightful furry companions and our frail yet marvelous selves.

There’s a grave forgetfulness at work, a symptom of sin that causes us to extol the gifts while cauterizing any reference to the Giver. This tyrannical sacred/secular divide is prophetically collapsed when real life meets thankful prayer. The blessing of animals is a potent countermeasure. It counters our divided forgetfulness. The blessing of animals is like an enacted remedy. It keeps this gift of all creation before our eyes by placing the human-animal relationship back in a theological frame.

Theologian and professor Myles Werntz gestures toward this human-animal relations, observing that “the love we have for our pets exists as a signifier of hope that we are more connected than we might suspect.” For Francis and for all Christians, the connection is our Creator. Therefore, on October 4, following St. Francis’s legacy, we bless our animals with this prayer:

O God, you have made us and all living things. You are even more wonderful than what you have made. We thank you for giving us these pets who bring us joy. As you take care of us, so also we ask your help that we might take care of those who trust us to look after them. By doing this, we share in your own love for all creation. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

This prayer may seem simplistic. It is not. It is a prayer laden with riches.

This line — “As you take care of us, so also we ask your help that we might take care of those who trust us to look after them.” — echoes the creation mandate, humanity’s call to care for God’s world as God cares for us. Rather than serve under God’s good, gracious rule, humanity rebelled. Despite humanity’s mutiny, God’s unbreakable love pledged a redemption that touches broken human creatures and our groaning creation as a whole (Rom. 8:22).

To pray a blessing over both owner and animal is to savor once move the Edenic ideal and rehearse the kingdom reality that the gospel in which we stake our full hope touches human souls and creation’s soil.

Pets vs. Kids?

A fair amount of modern religious discourse about pets revolves around the phenomenon of pets replacing children. Even Pope Francis has waded into the fray, commenting, “[w]e see that people do not want to have children, or just one and no more. And many, many couples do not have children because they do not want to, or they have just one – but they have two dogs, two cats … Yes, dogs and cats take the place of children.”

Many a thread could be pulled from the Pope’s yarn-ball of a quote, but this isn’t the time or the place. What matters is the tension between pet and child, whether felt, seen, accurate, or exaggerated.

The collect prayer above shows that care for our pets is not at odds with care for our children. Children are a magnificent gift, pets are a lesser one, and both are gifts from the luminous heart of God. Why not marvel over both, at all times, and in all ways?

Loving and blessing our pets need not usurp the place of children. Instead, it is the result of theological gratitude. Proverbs 12:10 states, “The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” John Chrysostom, the great early church preacher, reflected on this verse: “Surely we ought to show them (animals) great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.”

Whether or not you participate on October 4th, the next time you see your pet or your neighbor’s dog saunter unto your lawn, remember our St Francis, which is a way to remember our shared Creator, our shared edenic call, and the larger-than-we-imagine scope of the gospel.