Melkites bless their houses. Hence, it is house blessing time 2020. Schedule with Father Dennis to have him bless your home.
A brief reflection on this beautiful and important tradition.
The custom of the priest visiting parishioners’homes and businesses to bless them with the “Jordan Water” from Theophany has endured for hundreds of years. Traditionally, house blessings should be completed before the beginning of Great Lent.
The first few years, which are spent almost entirely in the home, are the most formative years of life.
In a real sense, the home is a school. Things are constantly being taught there. Parents and others in the household teach by what they are and how they live every day. It is the most important of schools, because values, attitudes, a way of life are taught there all the time. In a real sense, the home is also a church. Prayers are said there. God is worshipped there. Most homes have a Bible and prayer books. There is an altar in the home-the dining table. There we bless our daily food and eat it. This food becomes our body and blood-our tissues of life, constantly renewed and replaced.
There are people, Christians, in the home, just as in church. Most homes have a cross and ikons; many have candles. Most Christians pray at home, in the morning and in the evening. If they have sinned, they ask for God’s forgiveness. Certainly religion is not something found only in church. It is found in the home, too.
This is why the Church brings the blessing of Theophany into the home. Just as the home is an extension of the church, this blessing of the home is an extension of the service of blessing that began in the church. So let our homes be Christian places. Let them show our faith, with ikons and candles and prayers and Christian living. Above all, let them be places where the presence of Christ is felt day by day. Let them be places of light, of love, of refuge from the darkness of this world.
Fr. James Graham
THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET, Volume 8, Number 1
January 2002