January 9, 2008
By Pat McCaughan

Jason and Tracy Engel's San Juan Capistrano home hadn't been blessed before Epiphany Sunday but on January 6 they moved from room to room with a do-it-yourself kit from their church.

For 10-year-old Sarah, who lingered a few additional seconds over Sparkle Jr., Marie and Martha, her fish, taking charge of the bright blue vial of holy water was especially fun but also very serious. "Fr. Rob talked about the difference between believing and beholding in his sermon today," she recalled.

"He said this is a time we could bless our home, so in the next year before we do it again, we remember that this is a home where God is."

The Rev. Canon Robert Edwards, rector of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, said the interactive, intergenerational liturgy was designed to empower parish families to develop spiritual practices.

"The key to blessing one's home is rooted in Epiphany; it is not to see different things but to see things differently," Edwards said. "By blessing our homes we as a community are committing to being aware of Christ's presence in the most important place of our lives, our homes."

Blending ancient ritual, modern practice House blessings, a ritual included in the Episcopal Church's "Book of Occasional Services," have ancient roots and were designed to protect inhabitants from evil spirits. They date to the earliest days of Christianity, Edwards said, citing Christ's instructions to the disciples to extend peace to homes they entered.

Although typically clergy-led, Edwards said the time has come to more fully empower and incorporate the laity. "When the church allowed the laity to take communion to shut-ins we opened the door for all types of more creative liturgies in various settings," he said.

Besides, he added, "the Episcopal Church has the brightest, most creative and thoughtful people in Western Christendom and they can figure out how to conduct a meaningful ceremony in the confines of their home."

For the Lutz family, the day was meaningful and filled with new experiences and celebrations. While parents Bill and Shawn Lutz, of Capistrano Beach, attended the 9.30 a.m. family worship service, nine-year-old Henry and seven-year-old Phoebe were in Sunday School, decorating wooden stars and paper hearts.

They rejoined their parents for Eucharist and the blessing of jugs of water and after the church service converged on the parish hall to assemble kits. The children also designed covers for personalized family prayer bulletins. They had two cover options, to draw pictures and color them or to glue family photos taken that day to the covers.

The children filled bright pink, blue, yellow and green two-ounce plastic bottles with holy water, added candles, put them in a gift bag and topped it all off with the bulletins. They were encouraged to make an extra one for friends or family.

Then, it was home for the house blessings, but not before eating pizza and sampling the epiphany cake, said Shawn Lutz. "My kids were interested in finding the baby Jesus in one of the slices of cake so they could win the prize," of a tiara or crown, she said.

"We've been looking forward to it as parents," said Bill Lutz about blessing the family's three-bedroom Capistrano Beach bungalow. "We usually get an Advent wreath; we already have that tradition going with the kids. It's easy to follow and they can participate. The bottom line is, we like to enhance our family's religious experience and look for ways to do that.

"We're strong believers that we should go to church regularly and be involved in parish life and feel it's important to involve our kids, too. So everything we can do to influence our kids that way, we try to do."

Spontaneous "enhancements" included Henry's added prayer for the coffeemaker "because my dad likes to make coffee" in the kitchen which, as the "heart" of the home, is the suggested starting place for the ritual.

It was important to include creative options in the liturgy design, said the Rev. Rick Tiff, St. Margaret's youth minister and chaplain. He added that the Book of Occasional Services (BOS) liturgy had been modernized to include areas like computer rooms, in lieu of studies or libraries.

The Lutzes also "modified" the service to incorporate a music room with added blessings for the family piano, as well as Henry's guitar and cello and even his music stand. "We were really inclusive," laughed Shawn Lutz.

Tiff said the entire day was designed as a family-oriented "Epiphany festival. We wanted to make it fun for the kids, so we started with the story of the magi and invited them to offer gifts of the heart to Jesus," he said.

"They decorated paper hearts with pictures and wrote messages to Jesus. They processed into the church during the offertory and placed the hearts in the manger. They also decorated wooden stars which they held up every time we mentioned the words Jesus, light or shine. And we sang lots of songs with those words, like Shine Jesus Shine, I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, and This Little Light of Mine.

"The whole idea was to give them a chance to feel a part of the process," he said. "We created mini-aspergiliums with small plastic bottles like those used for bubbles, except they had snap-on cross lids so we felt they fit the occasion."

The children were also given the option to decorate their own candlestick, using a votive candle affixed to a cardboard cylinder. There was also a choice of prayer format: the traditional BOS form or the modernized version, incorporating family-oriented prayers such as this one, for the dining area as a place "where special moments" happen.

"Not only do we celebrate birthdays and holidays throughout the year, but we also come here for meals throughout the day. Bless the conversation and food during our meals."

"It's important to give people their own voice in worship and prayer and this is an opportunity to do it," he said.

St. Margaret's rector Edwards said the response has been positive, even eliciting a request from as far away as North Carolina.

"I am so glad to be part of this community, 2008 marks my 18th year," wrote Sandra Barham-Wells in an email from Charlotte. May I order four blessing kits? I am sending three of them to elderly people, and keeping one for my family."

Back in South Orange County, California, the Lutz and Engel families both say annual house blessings are now a part of their newest family tradition for Epiphany.

"We talked about everything we're thankful for in each room, but we didn't talk so much about objects," Shawn Lutz said. "In the bathroom, I was thankful for the sound of my daughter, playing in the bathtub with her toys. She sings and that's music to my ears. We prayed about things I hadn't thought about until we went through each room in the house and thanked God for how that room facilitates our life as a family."

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal Life Media's correspondent in the dioceses of Province VIII, encompassing the western United States and Pacific Rim. She is also associate for parish life at St. George's Church in Laguna Hills, California.