A Patriarchal Blessing A Message of Identity, Promise, and Love | Robert Patterson | 2001

Through experiences as a patriarch, Robert S. Patterson explains that your patriarchal blessing is a message of identity, promise, and love.

This speech was given on November 6, 2001.

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"Devotionals are a remarkable feature of this university. I have come to appreciate their amazing value as they contribute to our learning, our spirituality, and our sense of community. It is an inspiring sight as we all make the trek from our various places across campus to this location each week. Our attendance reflects the desire of students, staff, and faculty alike to experience, during this brief interlude, thoughts and feelings that provide uplift, strength, and joy for our individual and collective lives. It is an equally awesome and inspiring sight as you flood into this building and take your places. I love to look into your faces and consider the power you represent. Indeed, you are a mighty army. You are being prepared to go forth into the world—even into its more remote corners—to perform a mighty work. You are not here by chance or by fortuitous circumstance. I hope you recognize that you have been given a very special opportunity, one that will bless you, your family, and your associates. I feel I have been so blessed.

I am thankful that my dear companion, Belva, is here with me. It is largely because of her that I stand before you today. As a young woman, as a senior in high school, she introduced me to the doctrines and the way of life of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She exemplified in her conduct what she taught with her speech. Her obedience, happiness, and righteousness radiated truth and beauty. Thus she gave me reason to seek knowledge and a testimony of the Church that gave obvious meaning and purpose to her life. Later these same virtues, so evident in her life and so pleasing to my soul, also caused me to seek to be worthy to be her husband and companion. In the 40-plus years of our acquaintance, friendship, and marriage, I have never had occasion to doubt her love or her goodness. She is a true disciple of our Lord and Savior. It is impossible for me to pay adequate tribute to her or to find words sufficient to express all she has brought and continues to bring into my life.

I have chosen to talk to you about patriarchal blessings. I made this choice even though I am reasonably certain that the majority of you have already received patriarchal blessings. Experience has taught me that there is much that we can learn about these blessings that will cause us to treasure them and learn from them even more than we might at present. As I consider the ways I have grown in appreciation for the patriarchal blessing I received 45 years ago, I realize that the more we know about them—about their source, nature, and purpose—the greater will be their value in our lives. Perhaps my main reason for choosing this topic has to do with my deeply positive feelings about these blessings. Just last Friday—as I shared a wonderful hour with a young man, Karl, who came for a blessing—I reflected on how fortunate I was to experience the love of the Lord as it has been manifest on such occasions.

It has been a great privilege and blessing to me to have served for 20 years as a patriarch. I know from countless experiences during those years that patriarchal blessings are communications given to us as personal revelations from God. These few words, recorded on perhaps a page or more, are remarkable. Their prophetic utterances have great power. They speak to our uncertainties, our abilities, our gifts, our life’s experiences—all in the interest of assuring us of God’s love and of His willingness to help us face the challenges and trials of our lives and to sustain us safely through what we must face. Although I have been richly blessed through my priesthood calling to know that these blessings are from God, I find that my own personal patriarchal blessing is also a very significant source of testimony to me that the Lord’s servants speak prophetic words of truth and love to His children. To this day I continue to marvel at the ways in which the promises and statements in my blessing accurately foreshadow and give perspective to the experiences of my life..."