Dear Baba

My priest says it is time to sign up for house blessings. What am I signing up for? What do we have to do? Is it true he’ll bless even the storage rooms? Does my house need to be immaculately clean? Help! A priest will soon be on his way to my house with holy water and I have no idea what to do. - Panicked Homeowner

My dearest Panic; First of all, if ever anyone needed a restorative cup of tea that Agatha Christie always writes about in her mysteries, it is you. Please sit down and relax. I’m sure we can put all of this in perspective and take the mystery out of having your house blessed.

First of all I congratulate you for going ahead and scheduling a house blessing. Ready or not it should be done every year. Prepare yourselves and your home but please I beg you, don’t use a messy storage room as an excuse to not have your house blessed. Find a time between Theophany and the beginning of Great Lent (this year it begins on March 10) and get your house blessed. Some clergy will need to cut off house blessings before that so please check with him and don’t wait until the last minute.

I found a wonderful, short article on www.theologic.com in their archive section of Orthodox Family Life. Why that website has so many practical articles, if it offered tea it might just replace me. The author, Nichola Krause, writes “Christ, by entering the Jordan, sanctified it, and with it all creation. Material creation once again became ‘very good’ as it was in the beginning. The central sign of God's sanctification of all things through the feast of Theophany is the act of blessing the homes of faithful Christians. The priest visits all members of the Church to pray with them in the place where they live, and to bless their surroundings with Holy Water. He asks God to have mercy on the house, to rid it of every evil and to fill it with every blessing. Thus the house itself, together with the living persons of the family, is ‘filled with all the fullness of God’.”

Some tips on preparing for the priest’s visit:

• Clean your house. Everyone in the family should help. We’ve just spent Nativity Lent decluttering our hearts; now let’s clean up the house. Does it have to be perfect – no. But you should make an effort to avoid a ‘bless this mess’ scenario for the blessing. Because your home, your sanctuary from the world is about to be blessed, it deserves to be tidied. Just as you wouldn’t show up in church in your bathrobe, unshowered, unkempt, and dirty, you wouldn’t have a dirty, messy house presented for blessing either. But my dear – it is all about balance. Tidy but don’t do an ‘extreme makeover.’

• Prepare a list of the family members you wish to have commemorated. Use their baptismal names and not nicknames or secular names. It should be Katherine not Meemaw or Aunt Kate. Include Godparents and close friends. Check with your priest about how he wishes to handle the non-Orthodox. If you will be commemorating clergy, list them with their title. For example it isn’t Fr. James but the Priest James, the Archpriest George and so forth. And remember, the priest doing the house blessing will not commemorate himself.

• In a second column or second list, prepare a list of the departed. Please do not forget them. Again, use their baptismal names and check with your priest on how he wishes to handle the non-Orthodox.

• Decide on a place that will be your starting and stopping point for the house blessing. For some it is their icon corner, others may choose an icon in their living room or dining room. In this place, put your lists of those living and departed that will be commemorated and a candle that will be carried through the house. It is also desirable to have a censer and an icon(s) so all three will lead the procession of the priest through your home. This is a fantastic job for the children to lead or help lead the procession. Most I’ve seen take great pride in this solemn duty of blessing every room in the house.

• Plan out the route and if you have children who will be leading it, think through it with them. After the initial prayers are said the priest will go through the entire house singing the Troparion of Theophany. What route should he take to visit every room and then return to the starting point? Include in your plans the bathrooms, closet areas, garage, basement, and store rooms. I promise you with the blessings, the prayers, the movement through the house, the priest will not stand agape at what your garage or store room look like. With the number of rooms and the number of houses blessed, he won’t remember the details. At most I’ve heard priests comment that a particular house was huge and required that the Tropar be sung 10 times. Soak in the blessing – don’t miss it with fretting.

• The day of: make sure the lights are on in each room and hallway; turn off stereos, TV’s, computer games, cell phones – anything that is a distraction to the holy process happening in your house.

• Most priests will bless the pets as they move through the house although most (especially cats for some reason) tend to flee. Just make sure they are not under foot.

• Plan to visit with the priest afterwards in a pastoral visit. Depending on the time of day, it is appropriate to put out some refreshments (although I have heard of many a Matushka who has pled for mercy on her husband’s girth during house blessing season).

• And yes, while not required, it is customary to offer the priest a little something after the house blessing. No it is not required, no he isn’t doing it for the money, but do consider his gas expenses and so forth. It is an uncomfortable subject for many a clergyman but I’ve had so many people over the years ask about this that I’ll just be blunt right here over this cup of tea. You know, Babas can be very good at that. Yes you may give him a small offering and if you want to know what is customary in your parish, ask some of the long time faithful to get an idea of amounts. And then decide freely on your own. Please understand there is no pressure here.

• Some fun things I’ve seen done are group house blessings for parishioners living in a cluster near each other. Some do a progressive dinner; others will have the priest bless on a particular circuit with the families meeting up at the last house for a festive potluck dinner. Others will invite friends and family over for their house blessing. Be creative. It can be so much fun.

I’d like to offer a closing thought for you to ponder as we sip on this tea. Nichola Krause writes that the house blessing rids the house of every evil and fills it with every blessing. How does that evil get there? We bring it in. Just like we track dirt in on our shoes, so we allow the demons to ride in on our shoulders into our very homes. We invite it in with our choices. When we let the sun set on our anger, when we choose in ways that fall short of the glory of God, we bring in the dust, dirt of this world into our home. Just like our home needs a physical cleaning, so it needs a spiritual cleansing too. Not only should your home blessed this season, but keep holy water in your home to bless rooms, bless beds on a daily basis. Consider this your home’s spiritual restoration that you will maintain throughout the year.

With enveloping hugs and another hot cup of tea;

Baba