Those who have delved into the study of the theology of God in the early Christian centuries will have perceived that, for Christians, invoking the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit has always been a very serious matter. In fact, it constitutes the most condensed expression of the Christian faith and is present in the most important moments of life since baptism. The martyrs shed their blood in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This simple and customary expression has been used since the beginning of the life of the Church as a formula of faith, to praise God with the recitation or singing of the Gloria, and also to implore his blessing and protection. The Eucharist, which contains all the treasure of the Church, is celebrated in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In ancient times people were so aware of the transcendence of the name of God and of the correctness of the way to invoke him that St. Basil in the fourth century had to write a treatise to explain that the way he prayed the glory in the liturgy - saying, glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit -was compatible and equally appropriate as that other more traditional formula which prayed glory to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. God could not be invoked in just any way. If one did so carelessly, one could be failing to honor God, but above all one could remain outside the salvation offered by the Lord to all those who are faithful to him and who accept with simplicity the truth revealed by Jesus Christ.

From this perspective, it is understandable that dealing with the blessings that the Church dispenses in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not a minor topic . Whether they form part of a liturgical rite or arise spontaneously in the life of Christian communities, whether they are closely linked to the sacraments or are signs that by their context and circumstances are hardly related to them, they always involve an invocation of the name of God, the only name in which human beings can hope to be saved. And this name was not given to us, but is a gift of God whose power and efficacy precedes us.

This is why the publication of the Declaration Fiducia supplicans by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has aroused so much reaction among Catholics. Those who want the Church to change its doctrine and morals applaud the document with effusiveness, taking it as an approval of non-marital unions or homosexual unions by the Church. This, not surprisingly, perplexes people. Many pastors and faithful are analyzing with great concern whether or not invoking the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit on these couples is in accordance with the gift that God has given us by revealing his saving name to us. We are witnessing how many bishops around the world, entire bishops' conferences, are expressing reservations and even forbidding such blessings, out of concern for the pastoral care of their faithful.

Indeed, the consequences that this new pastoral can produce is not a matter of little importance for the life of Christians. The Christian East has long experience of a second nuptial blessing after divorce. The reason given is pastoral, the weakness of nature, and the tacit result is that the words of the Lord, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder (Mk 10:9), cease to be a reality and are reduced to an ideal, valid only for those who manage to live it. The risk that the pastoral internship of these spontaneous blessings that are now being proposed in the Catholic Church may follow the same path is unquestionable. Paradoxically, what pretends to bring people closer to God, becomes a internship that ends up confining the proposal of Jesus Christ to the realm of ideals, which our life, always so close to the earth, never ends up reaching.

The prudence of pastors and the faithful plays an essential role today in the face of the pressures of post-secular society. Some might wonder if we are not even facing a kind of neo-colonialism, this time pastoral, in which some foreshortened sectors of the Church, especially in Central Europe, are expanding their postulates on the Christian communities of the peripheries. What seems certain is that, if there is an incongruence between the proposal pastoral accompaniment of couples and the advertisement of the Gospel of the family, love and sexuality, the fracture between faith and the lives of many people will deepen. In this way, faith will remain more and more disconnected from the concrete existence of people, which will follow paths that have little to do with the divine life to which the children of God are called.

In this context, it is necessary to look back and see how God's blessings have been associated in the history of the Church with movements of conversion. Peter's words in the Temple of Jerusalem acquire today a new nuance that the prudence of the pastors and faithful will know how to discover: By raising his Son from the dead, God has sent him first of all to you, that he might bless you, turning every one of you from his iniquities (Acts 3:26). Conversion is therefore the pastoral framework in which the Church places her prayer of blessing in all cases: God blesses his children with the gift of conversion. For this reason, the children of the Church receive the divine blessing when we turn away from our mediocrity and our wickedness and open ourselves to the new life of the Gospel.