Blessing the Tools
Updated: Sep 2
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?”Mark 6:3
They lie on the table or hang on the wall: a hammer, a pair of secateurs, a kitchen knife, the worn handle of a broom.
Ordinary tools. Made for ordinary work. No one writes much about them, yet without them so much would remain undone.
You pick one up and feel its familiar weight. It fits the hand the way it always has. There is a quiet trust between the tool and the one who uses it.
Jesus worked with tools long before he preached. Wood, stone, the simple instruments of a craftsman’s life. The Gospels say almost nothing about those years, yet they were real. The hands that later healed and blessed had first learned the patience of making and mending. When his own town tried to name him, they did not begin with “teacher” or “prophet.” They said: the carpenter.
Most of the work that keeps the world going is done with tools like these. Unnoticed. Uncelebrated. Repeated until the handle grows smooth and the blade loses its first sharpness. A lock turned. A garden cut back. A floor swept. A meal prepared. These are not interruptions to the spiritual life. They are one of the places where it actually happens.
There is a way of using a tool that becomes a kind of blessing. Not by saying special words first, but by handling it with care, putting it back in its place, and refusing to treat it as if it were nothing. Attention itself can bless what it touches.
This is close to the Mass. We bring bread and wine and call them the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands. Before they become the Body and Blood of Christ, they are already the result of tools, labour, and time. God does not wait for unusual objects. He takes what has been held faithfully and makes it more than we could make it. The mystery we celebrate does not leave the workshop, the kitchen, or the garden behind. It gathers them up.
When you finish the task and set the tool down again, something small has been honoured. The work was ordinary. The tool was ordinary. And yet, for a moment, both were held with attention.
That attention is enough.