Blessing of Grapes

by Rev. Cav. William Rock, FSSP, SMOCSG

On 6 August, Holy Mother Church celebrates the great feast of the Transfiguration and begins a recapitulated Lent.  Long associated with this day is the blessing of grapes.  Writing in the thirteenth century, William Durandus the Elder, Bishop of Mende (d. A.D. 1296), who did for the liturgy what St. Thomas Aquinas did for theology, gives the following account of this practice in his Rationale Divinorum Officium (VII, XXII, 2):

Note that in some places on this day, the Blood of Christ is confected from new wine, if it can be found, or at least a small amount [of juice] from a ripe grape is squeezed into the chalice.  And also, clusters of grapes are blessed, from which the people take a share [communicat], and this is the reason why.  For on the day of the Last Supper, Jesus said to His disciples: And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father [Mat 26:29].  Because that which He called new, and also the Transfiguration, pertains to that glorious renewal, which Christ had after His Resurrection, and which the faithful will have after their resurrection; therefore, on this feast, the Blood of Christ is confected from new wine, and also because of this, on this day new grapes are blessed.

While Durandus presents a spiritual foundation for the practice of blessing grapes on 6 August, this must be considered a later development, one which came about after the origins of this practice had been forgotten.  The blessing of grapes on 6 August was originally, in fact, associated with the Feast of St. Sixtus II (d. 6 August A.D. 258), originally kept at Rome on 6 August prior to the adoption of the Feast of the Transfiguration (after the Feast of the Transfiguration was adopted, Sts. Sixtus and Companions would come be observed as a commemoration on the same day).  According to a tradition, it was Pope St. Sixtus himself who established

the custom of blessing grapes at the liturgy, in consequence of which the practice came to be very generally observed on his feast day in later centuries.  The day was held to be propitious as the grapes by then were generally ripe…When the feast of the Transfiguration came to be observed on 6 August, two Masses were celebrated on that day [one of the Transfiguration and one of St. Sixtus], and the blessing took place in the Mass of the Saint.¹

It is also noted that the blessing of grapes during the liturgy, at certain times and places, was additionally done on the “25 July, the joint feast of St. James and St. Christopher.”²

The point in the liturgy, that is the point during the Mass, at which the grapes would have been blessed was at the location of or as part of the Per quem hæc omnia prayer at the end of the Roman Canon, which seems to have been originally used for blessing “natural products.”³  In fact, the Gregorian Sacramentary⁴ preserves the text for the blessing of grapes which would have been added to the Per quem hæc omnia in Rome on the Nones of August (6 August), the Feast of St. Sixtus II:

Benedic domine et hos fructus nouos uuę./ quos tu domine rore cęli . et inundantia pluuiarum . et temporum serenitate . atque tranquillitate . ad maturitatem perducere dignatus es . et dedisti ea  ad usus nostros cum gratiarum actione percipere . in nomine domini nostri iesu christi . per quem hęc omnia domine semper bona creas.⁵

While the Roman Ritual does not have a blessing of grapes specifically designated for 6 August or for the Feast of the Transfiguration, there is a general Blessing of Grapes (Uvarum) which can be used at any time and, fittingly, on the Feast, which is presented below in the both the Latin and in translation.  It should be noted that a comparison of the text above found in the Gregorian Sacramentary and of that found in the Ritual shows that there is great overlap between the two of them, with only some slight differences (indicated in bold above and below and explained below), indicating the Ritual preserved this ancient Roman blessing of grapes whose origin goes back to early Roman Christianity.

℣. Adiutórium nostrum in nómine Dómini.
℟. Qui fecit cælum et terram.
℣. Dóminus vobíscum.
℟. Et cum spíritu tuo.

Béne✠dic, Dómine, et hos fructus novos víneæ [“of grapes” changed to “of the vine”], quos tu rore cæli, et abundántia [“inundation” changed to “abundance”] pluviárum, et témporum serenitáte atque tranquillitáte, ad maturitátem perdúcere dignátus es, et dedísti eos [change to eos to reflect back to fructus novos, here the reference seems to be more vague] ad usus nostros cum gratiárum actióne percípere in nómine Dómini nostri Iesu Christi: Qui tecum vivitet regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sæcula sæculórum.
℟. Amen.

Et aspergantur aqua benedicta.

℣. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
℟. Who made heaven and earth.
℣. The Lord be with you.
℟. And with your spirit.

Let us pray.
Lord, bless ✠ this new fruit of the vine, which in Thy benevolence Thou have ripened by heavenly dew, an abundance of rainfall, gentle breezes, and fair weather; and have given us to use with gratitude in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever.
℟. Amen.

They are sprinkled with holy water.⁶

But the blessing of grapes on the feast of the Transfiguration is not limited to those churches which follow the Roman tradition.  According to A Byzantine Rite Liturgical Year:

This feast [of the Transfiguration] falls during the time when the fruits of the earth reach maturity.  From the earliest times in the Eastern Church, on this day fruit is blessed in thanksgiving to God for the first fruits of the earth.  This custom was adopted by the Christian Church from the Old Testament which prescribed that fruit be brought to the Temple of the Lord.  In the Book of Exodus we read: “You shall carry the first-fruits of the corn of your ground to the house of the Lord your God.” (23,19)  In the Book of Leviticus we read: “When you shall have entered the land which I shall give you, and shall reap your corn, you shall bring sheaves of ears, and first-fruits of your harvest to the priest.” (23,10)

The custom of blessing the first-fruits in church was prescribed in the Canons of the Holy Apostles at the end of the third century.  The Apostolic Constitutions of the fourth century have a prayer for the blessing of first-fruits.  The local Synod of Carthage (318), in the forty-sixth rule gave prescriptions concerning the first-fruits that are brought to church.  The Sixth Ecumenical Council of 691 spoke of the blessing of the first-fruits of grapes (the vine) and wheat…

In Greece, in the month of August grapes and wheat, which are the more important fruits, reach their maturity.  For this reason, the custom of blessing the grapes and ears of wheat in church on the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord prevailed there.  In Rus-Ukraine, grapes of the vine were replaced by apples and other fruits.⁷

According to this, the origin of the blessing of first-fruits in the Christian tradition began in imitation of what was prescribed in the Old Testament and was codified by Church practice, as witnessed in ecclesiastical writings, and even by a decree of an Ecumenical Council.  The Byzantine practice of blessings of grapes on the Feast of the Transfiguration, according to the above, has an origin in Greece, as it was around the time of this Feast that grapes are harvested there.  While this explanation does shed some light on the ancient Christian practice of blessing fruit in general, it does not explain why the feast of the Transfiguration, as opposed to some other day or feast (the Feast of the Dormition/Assumption of Our Lady is only a few days later), was chosen for the blessing of grapes.  Though, perhaps, the Greeks adopted the Roman day, which predates the introduction of the Feast at Rome, and knowledge of this borrowing has been obscured in the East, and, just as in the West, the blessing of grapes became associated with the Feast of the Transfiguration rather than with St. Sixtus II.  In any case, both at Rome and in Greece, early August is the time grapes come to maturity and the Christian instinct led our forefathers in the Faith to mark an event of such importance liturgically.

Rev. Cav. William Rock, FSSP, SMOCSG was ordained in the fall of 2019 and was invested as an Ecclesiastical Knight of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George in the summer of 2025.  He currently resides at the FSSP Canonical House of St. Casimir in Nashua, NH, and ministers at St. Stanislaus parish.

In support of the causes of Blessed Maria Cristina, Queen, and Servant of God Francesco II, King 

1. King, Archdale, A. Liturgy of the Roman Church. (London: Longmans, Green and Co.,1957), pp. 340-341.
2. Ibid., p. 341
3. For a discussion on the purpose of the Per quem hæc omnia see Jungmann, Joseph, A. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2. Trans. Brunner, Francis A. (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1955), pp. 259-264.
4. The Gregorian Sacramentary is a Mass book originating in Rome, prior to A.D. 800 and possibly dating to the time of St. Gregory the Great himself (A.D. 590-604), containing the texts necessary for a priest to celebrate Mass (the orations, prefaces, Canon, etc.).  For a discussion about the date of this work see: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Liturgical Books.
5. The Gregorian Sacramentary Under Charles the Great. Ed. Wilsom, H. A. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1915), p. 92.
6. Rituale Romanum [1957], Titulus IX – Caput 7, 2; English adapted from the Weller translation provided online by EWTN (2, XI, VIII, 2).
7. Katrij, Julian. A Byzantine Rite Liturgical Year. Trans. Wysochansky, Demetrius. (Detroit: Basilian Fathers Publication, 1983), pp. 422-423.