blessing

Since today is Holy Saturday in the Catholic calendar, I found myself thinking about a small, almost private tradition I used to share with my grandfather. It wasn’t a grand ritual or a particularly pious one; it was simply ours, tucked into the quiet rhythm of spring afternoons in Subotica. In the early afternoon, we would walk to the church together and let the priest bless the food we had arranged in a basket — mostly meat and eggs, the things I no longer eat. The basket was always lined with a lace cloth that felt too ornate for the two of us, as if it belonged to a more devout household. But we used it every year, partly out of habit and partly because it made the whole thing feel like a real occasion. A touch of borrowed holiness never hurt anyone.

I was thinking about that today and wondering whether either of us ever truly believed that the food became holier because a priest had blessed it. If I’m honest, I don’t think we did. My grandfather believed in God more than I ever did, but even he never claimed that God was Catholic, or even Christian. His faith was quieter, more instinctive — a sense that something larger existed, but not something that required strict loyalty to any particular institution. He prayed in the Catholic way and went to the Catholic church because it was the only religious language he knew, the only structure that felt familiar. But he always made sure to clarify — implicitly, through his stories, through the way he spoke about Muslims and Jews with the same warmth he reserved for his Christian neighbors — that he wasn’t persuaded by Catholic doctrine itself. He treated religion the way some people treat old family recipes: You follow them because they’re part of your life, not because you think they’re the only correct way to cook.

And still, we loved that ritual. We loved walking through Subotica with our basket full of food, performing the role of convinced Catholics even though neither of us fully inhabited it. There was something almost theatrical about it — not dishonest, just lightly playful, as if we were participating in a tradition that belonged to everyone and no one at the same time. The blessing wasn’t the point. The faith wasn’t the point. The point was the two of us, side by side, moving through the city in a shared rhythm that belonged only to us.

I remember the details that didn’t matter at the time but feel precious now: how he dressed in his best suit and somehow managed to look like the most elegant man in town, even though the suit was a little too old and the shoes a little too polished. How I always had to slow my steps to the absolute minimum to align with his, matching my pace to the quiet rhythm of his aging body. How we sometimes had to stop when he struggled to breathe, and how those pauses — which I once treated as small inconveniences — now feel like tiny reminders that every second we had together was finite and therefore sacred. And how I never let him hold the basket — not because he asked me to, but because I felt a fierce, almost childlike need to protect him from anything that might tire him. He never protested. Not because he couldn’t carry it, but because he understood exactly what I was doing and allowed it, letting the kindness move through me like a shiver.

Inside, the church smelled of incense and damp stone, that unmistakable mixture of holiness and humidity that clings to old buildings. The priest would move from basket to basket with a seriousness that felt both impressive and faintly amusing, as if he were performing a ceremony whose gravity we respected but didn’t entirely share. My grandfather would bow his head just enough to be polite, but not enough to suggest he believed the ritual was transformative. It was a gesture of courtesy, not conviction — a small nod to tradition rather than an act of faith. I sometimes wondered whether the priest could tell, but if he did, he was gracious enough not to show it. Priests, after all, are trained professionals in the art of pretending everyone is more devout than they actually are.

That particular priest had a huge respect for my grandfather. I know it because he told me so once, when I ran into him in town. He spoke about my grandfather with a kind of gentle certainty, as if the recognition were obvious to anyone who paid attention. He saw him exactly for what he was: a man unafraid to be himself, unafraid to stand slightly outside the lines without ever making a performance of it. A man whose honesty didn’t need to be loud to be unmistakable.

After the blessing, we would walk home even more slowly, as if prolonging the moment. The food was exactly the same as before — no holier, no different — but the time felt fuller somehow, as if the ritual had carved out a small pocket of peace just for us. The walk back always felt like the real heart of the tradition: the quiet companionship, the shared sense of having done something together, even if neither of us believed in its theological purpose.

Looking back, I think the holiness was never in the food. It was in the time we spent together — in the quiet agreement that this small tradition mattered, not because it was religious, but because it was ours. The blessing was just a pretext. The real sacredness was in the companionship, the familiarity, the gentle choreography of a grandfather and grandchild pretending, for an afternoon, to belong to a faith they didn’t quite believe in but still somehow cherished. And maybe that’s what tradition really is: not certainty, not doctrine, but the simple act of returning to something together, year after year, until it becomes a kind of love — the kind that doesn’t need to be blessed to feel holy.