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Do any other cultural/faith traditions here have the custom of blessing your home every year or at the very least, when you first move in? (According to Wikipedia this is a custom done by Catholics, Orthodox and also some Protestant)

How many here have had their homes blessed by a priest?

Alice

We have had our home blessed by a priest a few times, though not every year. I don't know how common it is in the Latin Church. Some friends of ours had their home blessed when they moved in, and again after they completed a renovation. The wife is from the Philippines, so maybe it is more common over there.

Elizabeth

ALICE:

Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!!

We had our home blessed shortly after we moved in--1980. Since then, the clergy don't have time. In fact, our current pastor has put together a "do it yourself" kit that he distributes each year around Epiphany: a holy water bottle and a printed ritual sheet. Guess with the upcoming clergy shortage we ought to figure this is the wave of the future.

BOB

Alice,

We do whenever we move into a new home someone has purchased. Quite a formal affair with moleben and stuff - but it only happens once (per home) I guess.

Of course on Epiphany the Priest goes to everyones' house and blesses it with a 'top-up' blessing (maybe one of the more learned on here could give us a better phrase!) that is done in about 10 - 15 minutes. Every room, garden, fridge, pantry (make sure car is open he will do in there too!) is given a splashing that holds it over till next year

My sister for example, rents a home with her husband, so that hasn't been blessed.

Cheers,

Misha

I have conducted house blessings only a few times--I truly wish that more people would desire this. Of course in a very stable community there are relatively few relocations or new homes constucted by parishioners.

I use an adaptation of the liturgy of the Book of Occasional Services of the Book of Common Prayer; because that provides responsorial verses from the Psalms, a Scripture reading, and prayer for every--and I do mean EVERY--room of the house. We process from room to room with a lighted candle, concluding with the dining room where the table is used for the celebration of the Eucharist.

The most recent blessing is now some nine years distant, but what stands out was not the liturgy but, as the late Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story". The house was a town house in a gentrified urban neighbor, purchased by a young couple expecting their first child. Less than a month later I was called to that neighborhood as a Police Chaplain because a homicide had taken place across the street from the recently blessed home. When clearning the scene I mentioned that to one of the Detectives who cynically replied, "a lot of good that blessing did".

Well....day or two later when I asked the couple how they had fared through all the commotion, they said, "what commotion?" They'd slept through it all and never knew a thing.

"The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and he will deliver them".

Our Pastor asks the members of the Church to sign up for a time during the month of January and he blesses all of the homes in the parish every year. We have about 125 families, give or take.