The Weight of Priesthood

Finally, the actual minute came. We were gathered in my dad's bedroom. He was sitting in his rocking chair. Another priesthood holder had anointed my dad with consecrated olive oil, and now my hands were on my father's head. I felt my position distinctly. My father had often given me blessings of healing. And every year on the Sunday before a new school year started, he would give each of his children a father's blessing to help them get started (though my math grades never improved). Now I was the one giving the blessing. I cleared my mind and allowed myself a bit of time to listen. By "listen," I mean to God. I was a piece of beeswax waiting for any sort of impression to come. And I was desperate enough to take anything.

Turned out, my dad wasn't slated for immediate miraculous healing. Or even postponed, medically assisted healing. Or anything. In fact, I told him this pain was a test, and he needed to suffer through it. You'll find stuff along the way, I said, that will help alleviate the pain, but for now, God loves you. Keep a stiff upper lip. And all that.

Which reminds me, there's another gremlin hanging on the back of the blesser's mind. Namely, what if I don't have enough faith? Maybe I went into this whole deal not believing enough. Maybe I am the cause of the defusing of this blessing. Maybe a mustard seed could leave me in the dust. And, of course, this worry seemed the most probable explanation to me as the blessing ended. Perhaps my faith had failed.

So far I was batting nothing. I decided to just keep this whole incident in my pocket as I went off on my mission to Toronto and be really careful about whom I agreed to bless. I hadn't lost faith in the power of the priesthood, but you could say that I became a kind of deist. I started thinking of blessings as moral support rather than a transaction from God, because the few people I blessed always felt the quiet goodness of the Spirit afterward, but the effects didn't last long. I figured this was all right. We'd stick with what we had. But the old stories still knocked around in the back of my mind: those missionaries who actually called the power of God down from heaven.

One day I received a letter from my mom. She told me something weird -- that my first blessing was actually seeing some action. Dad had figured out that eating mint or sage brings on a headache. "Remember," she wrote, "that you told him he would find ways to alleviate his pain; well, here it is." I was surprised. Maybe there was something to this blessing thing after all. Then a few months later, my mom wrote again to tell me that Dad was installing a Jacuzzi, which apparently does wonders for an aching back. It sounded a little on the worldly side to my poverty-ridden missionary sensibilities, but God is reputed to work in mysterious ways.

About eighteen months into my mission to Toronto, my companion and I were dawdling away a muggy summer afternoon knocking on doors inside a large apartment complex. It was tedious going. Hardly anyone was at home. In fact, at one door, a housecleaner answered and gave us a royal chewing out for awakening the apartment's occupant, a woman dying of cancer. She slammed the door and we walked down the hall, feeling like scum, but seeing nothing else but to stump ahead. What else were we going to do, preach on a street corner in heat so wet your shirt stuck to your skin? No, we preferred this air-conditioned somnambulism. It was not a little annoying to hear the door open behind us again. No doubt the housekeeper was going to inform us that she had called the manager and that we were to be expelled at any moment. "Hey, come back," she said. We looked back. Her face seemed different. She told us to come in and pointed at the woman lying in a rented hospital bed. She was a short, round Guyanese woman in her sixties. Her dark skin contrasted the white floral print gown she was wearing.

"Elders," she said, "Elders, Jesus brought you. Thank you, Jesus." Apparently Jesus had brought us to that apartment. But now what were we supposed to do? The first thought that comes to any missionary's mind when he is in a situation like this is, I wonder if this person wants to be baptized? It's not a subtle thought, but missionary work is not a subtle job. The problem was, I had no idea what this woman was trying to say. She had a thick accent and couldn't get too many words out at a time. I thought about just teaching her the first missionary lesson when my companion finally got what she was saying. "She's a Mormon." He picked up a book from the shelf, and sure enough, it was that distinctive navy blue cover with gold lettering. Admittedly, my heart fell a little. We hadn't baptized someone in a while, and I was hoping this encounter was the answer to our prayers. We found out that her name was Evelyn and that she had been baptized a few years ago, but had moved, contracted cancer, and lost contact with the Church.