The Year of Church and Home -One in Spirit

Pastor’s Points of Light  -  Vol. 55/1 January 2007

“The ‘Home Blessing’ ceremony is the best opportunity for the parish priest to get acquainted with you and your family, and to distribute the Divine blessings. We are confident that you will comply with our request and refrain from denying to all the members of your family the Divine blessings that we all need as human creatures.”

Abp. Barsamian

Blessing of the Home is not just a separate and distinct rite that stands alone.  It does not make up for poor church attendance or fill in for delinquency at the Badarak and Communion.  It is, in fact, intimately associated with the life in Christ and a life that is regularly and faithfully nourished by the church. 

The rite begins not in our own personal home, but begins and ends at the Home of God, in the church, where the faithful gather around the Lord’s Table and receive His blessings of abundant life.  Without the common life within the church, there can be no meaningful Christian experience outside the church.  The church is the focal point of our religious life, the source and inspiration of our faith in Christ.  Our homes must reflect the image of God’s home and thus the Blessing of the Home reminds us of how God’s blessings and presence are reflected in us and in our families.  Without the home mirroring the Church and God’s household, our experience of Christian life is useless.   The reason for this is simple.  Outside the church we cannot know God and God does not know us.  Does this mean that outside the church God is unaware of our existence?  Not at all.  What this means is that he doesn’t know us in the intimate way that He desires as we are incorporated into His Body the Church, sharing fellowship with Him at the Table of Christ.  Within the Church, he comes to know us, in Christ, as if we reflected the very nature of His Son.  Remaining outside the Communion of the church, we reflect only the dim and tainted image of Adam, lost and cast off from God’s presence.  The parallel to this is a family who have gone their separate ways never sitting at a table together to share a meal.  The reality in modern America is that many if not most families are deprived, either willingly or because of circumstances, the fellowship of the family meal. 

Through the intimate association of the faithful immersed in Christ’s presence in Church we come to know God in His full manifest Glory and are likewise fully known as offspring bearing the image and the likeness of Christ having been reborn from the waters of Baptism, incorporated into the Body of Christ.  Christianity is not a religion that one can “experience” personally apart from others.   The joy of being named a Christian is the invitation to share all things in common, even eternal life.

Likewise, the blessings that we receive from our shared, or ecclesial, experience is manifest in our home, at the family table where with the breaking of bread our eyes are opened to a more significant and deeper knowledge of our family and our traditions.  The Home Blessing for this reason generally takes place in the home in the company of the entire family, parents, children and sometimes relatives.

Make time in your busy schedules to experience the joy of having your home blessed, to see the wonder in your child’s eyes as the priest burns incense, waves the cross over the salt water and bread, and blesses the walls and corridors of your home in the Name of Christ.  This is the Year of Church and Home and I would be so proud and humbled to be invited to your home to pray and to bless you and your families asking God to spare you from the dangers of this world and keep you under the protection of His Holy and Precious Cross in Peace, now and always and unto the ages.

Prayerfully,   

 Der Shnork