Sunday, October 3rd was the Blessing of the Animals Ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It was an amazing ceremony, in which I participated. However, I’m not here to write about the ceremony itself. I’m here to write about the six months of planning and arranging that go into the ceremony.
On the feast day of St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals and ecology, St John’s invites animals and their companions from all over the country to come to be blessed. My sister, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, was in charge of lining up the animals that were to be blessed, and she was crucial to the backstage crew. She’s been a part of the ceremony for six years running and has actually had her two cats, Storm and Spikel, blessed by the clergymen present.
Although it may sound how easy to line up a bunch of animals, it was actually stressful. When asked if her job was a high-stress one, she said, “Yes, but not because of the animals. The animals are well-behaved—the people are crazy.” However despite all this stress, she has experienced some funny stories. She told me that the funniest moment in her six years at the Cathedral was the one year that the bishop insisted on having a full-sized horse in the ceremony. So when the organizers brought a horse into the church to be blessed, it ran right up to the bishop’s family, and proceeded to urinate on them. However this year, there were much better animals than a horse. There was a camel, a giant sea turtle, and a yak, among many other exotic animals. All in all, this ceremony was quite unimaginably wonderful, and something that everyone must see.