Blessing and Chalking Homes on Tuesday, January 6

Epiphany is one of the seven principal Feast Days of the church (along with Easter, Ascension Day, Day of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints' Day and Christmas). Most of these days fall on a Sunday. We can transfer All Saints day. Ascension Day is always on a Thursday and it is only Epiphany that is at the whim of the calendar and also not a national holiday that people have "off" from work. What I find this means is that rarely can you get people to come to church for an Epiphany service... therefore, I have embraced home blessings.

Since the time of the Middle Ages, it has been a tradition that on the Feast of the Epiphany, we pray for God's blessing on our dwelling places, marking the entrance to our homes with chalk. Chalk is used as a tangible reminder of the dust of the earth from which we are all made.

We mark the main door of our home with the initials of the magi and the numerals of the new year. The initials remind us of the (purported, from later tradition) names of the magi—Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar—-and also stand for the Latin motto: Christus mansionem bendedicat, "May Christ bless this house." We connect the initials and the numerals with crosses at a sign that we have invited God's presence and blessing into our homes.

Please send an email to me (Sarah) if you are going to be home on Epiphany, January 6th and would like your house blessed (rector@sharonchapel.org); please also send your address and preferred time. I will try to accommodate requests and do as many as feasible. If you won't be home, and would like chalk, we can send you home with blessed chalk for you to bless your own home.