www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship The Other Sacramental Mysteries Blessing of honey.

That is a later 19th century/Synod of L'viv era blessing.

My interest sparked by this discussion, I called one of my faithful Ethiopian lamb customers who also keeps bees. He claimed that St. Clement of Alexandria was an Ethiopian/Coptic patron of beekeepers as well. I'd have to go back and compare with the 1646 Slavonic, but I think the Ukrainian translation I posted is that from St. Peter Mohyla's Trebnik.

There is sufficient interest that this blessing will be offered at the close of the Sunday Liturgy next week.

I'm hoping that that this can become an annual tradition on the first Sunday of August.

The parish is in a rural community. We have always held a blessing of the seeds and soil on Rogate (Sunday before Ascension) and hold a "Harvest Home" ingathering in late September. So this should be a natural extension.

"lead us not into the hive, and deliver us from,p bee-vil" ?

I am beginning to ponder how this blessing (if celebrated today) is exactly six months opposite to the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of Mary...a Feast which in the western tradition also bears the name of "Candlemass" and involves blessing the other fruit of the labor of bees--the tapers formed from their wax.

Consider how in February we celebrated the appearance of Our Lord with the Theotokos in the earthly temple; now we embark in a time of preparation for the day when she who bore the Eternal Word was presented by Him into the Eternal glory. The sweet odor of the honey may well be a hint of the Paradise that awaits.

And perhaps the connection between the Feasts is the Feast of Feasts, Pascha, which falls between--thinking especially of the final verse of "The Angel Cried"

Shine, O new Jerusalem, be radiant in the Resurrection of your Son.

A radience foreshadowed in Simeon's Song and fulfilled by the Theotokos' own dimitting.