From the Archives: "Bringing the Blessing Home: The Many Occasions for House Blessings"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

Elaine Ramshaw reminds us that bringing back the old practice of blessing a home for an individual or a family is not about the house but the people. “What it’s really about is the holiness of everyday life.” A liturgical scholar whose particular thrust is pastoral care, Ramshaw seeks to encourage Christians to first look anew at two familiar life events in terms of liturgies of blessing: moving into a new home and offering blessings on Epiphany every year. Using all the senses, involving children, and making it simple for laity to take hold of the ritual moves a community closer to thinking of blessing as a normal part of life. She discusses blessings of dorm rooms, nursing home rooms, saying goodbye to a house, reclaiming a violated home, and the rich promise of blessing serving as evangelism, nurturance for lesbian or gay couples, adoptive or foster families, and families and couples affected by divorce. –– Melinda Quivik

Selected Quotes from

“Bringing the Blessing Home:
The Many Occasions for
House Blessings”

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House blessings are a way of blessing people (and pets) in situ, in vivo. The practice of house blessing lets us bless people’s living in the place where much of that living happens. It is a ritual of vocation, in the deepest and broadest sense, engaging the ways we practice our faith in our homes.

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A ritual that touches people where they live has the potential to be healing at many times of transition. The main purpose of this essay is to suggest a whole raft of such possible occasions for home blessings, with the hope that this ritual hinge between God’s care and our daily life will occur to you as a possible form of ministry in these and other situations.

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Parishes that offer house blessings in which congregational members participate find that these rituals can help forge community in the congregation. They help offset the excessive privatization of contemporary American life, where communal activity and neighborhood ties are decreasing.

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One of the most important things for pastors to do in the area of occasional services is to move away from the understanding of occasional services as belonging to the pastor, since the pastor alone has the special ritual book. A pastor’s role is sometimes to bring prayer or blessing, and sometimes to empower layfolk to pray and bless as a natural part of their vocation.

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Elaine Ramshaw, a Lutheran laywoman, teaches pastoral care online from her home in Connecticut.

Ramshaw, E. “Bringing the Blessing Home: The Many Occasions for House Blessings.” Liturgy 21, no. 4 (2006): 19–27.

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