Video Transcript
Moderator Question: We have a question about patriarchal blessings. One youth from Utah said, "I love my patriarchal blessing. But I must admit there are times where the sacred document seems to cause more stress than comfort. There are times where I read the counsel given and wonder if I'm walking up to the promises of the blessing. In what way should I use or view my patriarchal blessing to make sure these feelings don't arise?"
Elder Holland (to Elder Eyring): I've heard you on patriarchal blessings. Now, you've got to respond to that.
Elder Eyring: Yeah, yeah. I shall. I got a patriarchal blessing when I was 11 years old. And I got it from a patriarch named Gaskell Romney. And he had never - I don't think he'd ever seen me before. I was in the mission field, and so I had to go to Utah to get a patriarch. That was before they had patriarchs everywhere. And so Uncle Gaskell was my grandmother's brother. And I went to Uncle Gaskell, and he put his hands on my head and began to talk about my future and began to describe it in words from 1 Corinthians, the 13th chapter. Charity, of charity.
And I opened my eyes because I thought, "How does this old man, whom I've never seen before, know that since I've been a little boy, that scripture has every time" - by the way, it was before the Supreme Court said you couldn't do church things in public schools. And so we had a thing where the kids, everybody got to pick a scripture. So you had 30 kids in the class, so every 30 days it would come my turn. I always picked the same scripture - always the same. The kids must have thought -oh, I don't know what they thought. And then here's this patriarch saying, "You'll have a family someday. This is a description of what will be in that family."
And so I'll tell you, the way to look at a patriarchal blessing - my suggestion is, look, it may be kind of tough. I know my wife's patriarchal blessing said, "Be careful when you go to university. Somebody's going to come after your faith. And you'd better protect yourself, and you'd better listen to your parents." So here's this patriarchal blessing. You'd say, "Oh, that's tough." Well, you know, it's a warning. Well, it turns out when she came back to where I was in Boston, and she was there for the summer, the summer that I met her, there was a guy there at Harvard who actually told people, "I'm going to get that girl. I'll get her faith." And I'm telling you, a patriarchal blessing - I would take it very, very seriously but not expect it to be comforting.
It could be a warning. And I won't tell other stories. But I can tell others of being a bishop of a girl who had a disaster. And she had said that her patriarchal blessing had warned her in detail of what that was going to be, and it came. And so a patriarchal blessing is whatever the Lord wants it to be for you. But I wouldn't read it - I wouldn't read it for sweetness. I would read it for "What does God know about my life, and what can I do better?" And I would look at it that way. And it's not supposed to make you feel sweet. It's supposed to make you know what it is God has in store for you. And it's a wonderful - I'll just bear you my testimony; they're real.
Gaskell Romney knew things he couldn't have known if God hadn't told him. So that's my suggestion. The patriarch is someone who God does direct, and you are wise to take whatever it - if it's a warning, take that. If it's comfort, take that. If it's direction, take that, but just - it's one of the - by the way, speaking of having a conversation with God, a patriarchal blessing comes pretty close.Share
Sign In to comment on this quote
