Last Sunday was the day my house would be blessed. I know most people who read this blog aren’t Catholic, so maybe this is also a good occasion to explain why I have my house blessed. Back in the time when I wasn’t Catholic myself either, I considered people to bless their houses to be superstitious. I thought they did it because they wanted to prevent this way that their house would burn down or flood or avoid burglary and such.

After studying the Catholic faith a bit, I discovered most of my ideas surrounding house blessings were prejudices based on what I thought to be the Catholic faith practice. To a Protestant having objects blessed makes no sense, it looks like magical thinking from the Catholic side. Some people would be extremely careful with blessed objects, almost to the point of handling magical objects. But when you think a bit deeper, things start to make sense. Take the Holy Scriptures for instance: the image of the house is being used many times:

In the Old Testament, Moses builds a tent for God in the desert while the people of Israël wander for forty years. In that tent they keep the Ark of the Covenant and it’s a place of worship. After settling in the Promised Land, David promises to build a house for the Lord and his son Solomon will finish it. In the New Testament Our Lord uses the image of the house to say things about us and our lives. Our bodies are a Temple (House) for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to dwell in us. God get closer to a person than that. Talking about dwelling places is a major theme in the Scriptures, but at the same time everybody realises that God doesn’t need a tent, a house or even a temple. But God likes to be close to us and we like to have places to go to to worship him.

We still build houses for the Lord. We call them churches nowaday. It’s a place where we gather for the breaking of the bread, just like the first Christians did in the Scriptures. They came together in houses to have fellowship and worship. However, we aren’t people who only show our faith inside churches or temples. We are also called to live our faith outside. During Mass, or better: just before Mass ends this is made very clear when the deacon says or sings “Ite Missa Est”, “This is Mass”. It’s one of the very last things that’s being said during Mass, but it’s said in the present tense. So what follows next, THAT is Mass. At least, that’s how a priest explained it to me. This means that everything that’s important we do after we leave from Mass. Mass service prepares us for it.

What has this to do with a house blessing? I think you can think along the same lines about your own house. A house is a roof above your head, it allows us to eat in peace, to refresh ourselves, to rest, to invite people and all the other things that gives us energy to do what we are called to do. Working in the vineyard of the Lord becomes very complicated, if not impossible if you’re not rested, if you’re hungry, if you’re not at peace. We need our house as much as we need Mass to live our faith. And because I start all of my days in my house, I want to have it blessed, to make a statement everything starts with the Lord.

This goes much deeper than a superstitious protection against bad luck, the devil, fire and what not. Maybe God protects me from that, but I believe he would do that anyway, whether my house is blessed or not. If I want to protect myself against a fire, it would probably a better idea to install a smoke detector and other security measures than having a priest sprinkle everything with a few drops of holy water.

This ‘deep’ reason wasn’t for me the only reason to have my house blessed. Catholics love throwing a party. We just need reasons to do so. It’s a day of a housewarming party, having fun with friends too. That’s why I asked a priest friend to do the blessing instead of my own parish priest. Just to have a good excuse to have him come over here to have a lot of fun. And boy, did we had a blast that day. Maybe I need to invite him again for Epifany so I can have a blessing again.

A friend who was joining in the festivities took some pictures of the ‘event’. I’m walking around with a small bowl filled with holy water and Fr. Roderick has an aspergillum (a small metal container with a sponge in the head) to sprinkle holy water. He says a prayer when we arrive at a certain place that’s dedicated to that place and blesses it with the holy water.

So now all my friends who aren’t Catholic know why we bless our houses.

A small meditation and prayer

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