Picture source: Marianland Please check out their fine Catholic products.This month's poll is coming to an end. It seems that a few of you would like more information on having your homes blessed.
First let me share with you our house blessing story.
Growing up, our home was never blessed. My mom didn't think that our house was neat enough or clean enough to invite the priest over for a house blessing. With five kids and many pets, my mom was probably right about the neatness factor. But that should not have been a deterrent for our home to be blessed.
My parents only recently had our family home blessed after 40 years of living there. I hope you don't wait that long. A good friend of the family, Fr. Ignatius blessed the home and my mom is so happy about that.
After being married our new home was a rental apartment in Hawaii. We were blessed to have an associate pastor, a Maryknoll priest, Fr. Tom Donnelly who offered to have each and every home belonging to the parishioners, blessed. He went down the line alphabetically.
When it was our turn, I jumped at the offer. My husband was at work that day so it was only Fr. Tom and me. He went from room to room (small as it was) and gave each of the rooms its own special blessing. Then he blessed me.
Afterwards, Fr. Tom and I had a nice lunch together.
Before adopting Joey, we had to move into a bigger place so we moved into another apartment but in the same building. I contacted Fr. Tom and he joked about making a habit of moving and just to get a new blessing. Ha ha.
Once again he came over and blessed our new place, room by room. We ended that day with a nice little lunch where we got to know each other a little better.
Finally, we were able to purchase our own home. By this time, Fr. Tom had been assigned to the Big Island and he couldn't bless our home. I contacted another good friend of our family, Fr. Anthony Pasquale, now deceased. Fr. Pasquale came over and blessed our new home just like Fr. Tom had. This time was a little different however. This time, we had a dog and a bird. Fr. Pasquale, not only blessed the home, room-by-room but also our family and our pets! Afterwards, we all sat down to a nice dinner with good conversation.
In addition, we had our home enthroned to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Initially, we performed this ceremony with my husband as head of the family, performing the ceremony. Later on, our friend Fr. Art Dwyer, blessed our enthronement when he visited.
I strongly recommend that if you have not already done so, that you contact your parish priest and make an appointment to have your house blessed.
I found a link through Living Catholicism which may be of further help to you, as well as a link to a House Blessing
If you have any more questions, please feel free to leave a comment or email me.
8 comments:
One of the traditions that I love in Orthodoxy is that we have our house blessed yearly, after the feast of Theophany (Epiphany in the West). Living in a yearly blessed home is lovely.
Which reminds me, we had a short Theophany season this year, and somehow my house wasn't blessed. I need to email my priest.
That is a wonderful tradition Mimi! I forgot to mention, we got our car blessed too (when we first bought it).
Yes indeed, that is common in our tradition as well, to have the priest bless your car.
When he blesses our house, I've seen him open the garage door and bless the car quickly.
And, I've also seen him bless our cats - in fact one year, our curious kitten followed him around the entire house, then he turned and blessed her :)
Mimi, that is so nice. It really is!
Esther,
What else beside a dinner do you offer the priest? I know you don't have to give them money and that most likely they will give it directly to the church, but is therw a certain amount that is traditional to give a priest on such an occasion?
My mom used to work for our church and I loved it, because I could always ask her this stuff! I hate asking the church itself, as if I should just know! Heavens! I just thought about how if I ever have another baby I wouldn't even know what to do first in getting him or her batized, lol! My mom alwasy took care of it for me! I guess I was spoiled!
Sorry for all the spelling mistakes! I was typing too fast! LOL
Amy, as far as I know, I don't think you need to compensate them monetarily like you would at say a wedding or a baptism. But I may be wrong. Maybe you could ask one of our fellow priest bloggers for their advice on this.
In the Orthodox tradition, anyway, as practiced by my diocese, you don't pay the preist, but I always have coffee and dessert type things and sit and chat with Father and his Matushka (wife) afterwards.
I've heard of some traditions where an envelope of a donation is given.
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