How to transform your home into a sacramental

“Wow, your home has such a great aura! You can feel the love and happiness here!” An acquaintance had stopped by my house to pay me for babysitting. I was probably 13 at the time. While I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, I agreed with her. Family breakfasts at the kitchen table, summer picnics in the backyard, birthday parties all crescendoing to the cutting of a beautifully decorated cake at the dining room table — those times within those specific walls have made me who I am today.

I’ve been reflecting on how the physical places I lived growing up were not just good places and happy memories, but how they were actual channels of grace in my life. A book I read for a recent family retreat, Home by Marilynne Robinson, sparked some of these thoughts. In it, the patriarch of a large family still lives in the house he raised his children in. As his adult children come back to visit, the memories evoked by the space enable reconciliation and the healing of past hurts.

I want my current home to be a place of peace and joy so that maybe now or sometime in the future it can also be a place of healing for those who enter it. Did you have that growing up? Either in your own house, or the house of a friend? A place where when you entered the door, you felt free and known and safe? A place perhaps where it was easier to choose to do the right thing because you knew there was unconditional love but also standards to live up to?

Let’s detour a bit quickly and talk about sacramentals. Sacramentals help prepare our souls to receive grace and make different ordinary life occasions holy. (CCC 1667) So, a scapular is a sacramental, as is holy water, as is a blessing.

I’d like to argue that you can help make your whole home a sacramental, in that there are many ways your home can become a channel of grace.

Here are five examples of how you might do that:

There is a blessing and scripture reading especially for house blessings, and then the priest will use holy water to bless either the four corners of your house or go room to room blessing each space.

By praying daily in your home, you and your family can become channels of grace for others. Having a designated space for prayer, like a prayer table or corner, helps with this. (This book has excellent tips on how to create one).

Every time you extend hospitality to someone, that is an opportunity for a grace-filled encounter. Think of Abraham entertaining angels unbeknownst to him, Elizabeth’s open door to her cousin Mary, or the innkeeper who finally gave Joseph and his family a place to stay.

Beauty points us to God, and all of us can create beauty in our home if we put in some time and research. Have the comfort of those around you in mind so that living life in your home is intuitive and inviting. In your decorating, remember to showcase what is important to you as well as keeping your space functional for others.

If keeping the font filled with holy water is too much of a feat, or too much of a temptation for small children (ask me how I know), try putting blessed salt in it instead. You can still make the sign of the cross with blessed salt and it is less apt to get used up quickly or sloshed out as water.

At the very least, and perhaps to the greatest effect, your efforts of joyful sacrifice can help prepare both you and those you encounter to receive grace. Perhaps your perseverance in the slog of daily love will help someone discover the faithfulness of God’s love.