For Orthodox, Great Lent is a time to 'bless this house'
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The Rev. James Purdie of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral blesses the home of his parishioners Michael and Randi Sider-Rose and their children.
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The living room of their house in Highland Park reveals Michael and Randi Sider-Rose's desire to have a holy home.
Icons of Jesus, Mary and the saints gaze from the walls and from shelves that serve as the official icon corner. Mrs. Sider-Rose, an iconographer, "wrote" some of the images herself -- the term is used because icons are considered God's word in images. But she keeps reproductions on a low shelf, where her three small children can see and hold them.
It's because of that desire for a holy home that they chose to have a priest bless their house for a second year in a row.
"Blessing a home is one way of expressing the truth that all of our actions are a way of offering the world back to God," she said.
House blessings -- also done in the Catholic and some Protestant traditions -- can be done at almost any time. Traditionally in Eastern Orthodoxy they cluster between Theophany, the Jan. 6 celebration of the baptism of Jesus, and Great Lent, which begins at sundown today. Orthodoxy is the eastern wing of the Christian church that split into the Orthodox and Catholic churches in 1054.
The Sider-Roses own their house in Highland Park, renting an integral apartment to another young, Orthodox family with whom they shared the house blessing. All four adults in the house are converts to Orthodoxy from Protestant traditions.
"In the Orthodox church, the home is understood as a little church," said Meredith Burnett, who lives in the apartment with her husband, Joshua, and daughters Katherine, 3 and Naomi, 1.
"It's really good for the kids to see the home as a sacred space. It's one thing to tell them that they should pray and what we should believe. But if they only see that on Sunday and don't have a sense of it continuing at home, it's almost pointless to do it once a week at church."
House blessings are encouraged, not required, said the Rev. James Purdie, an assistant priest at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Oakland, which both families attend.
The tradition is tied to Jesus' baptism because of the water, he said. "When Christ was baptized in the waters, it not only revealed the Trinity to us through the voice of the Father speaking ... and the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus in the likeness of a dove," he said. "But when he goes into the waters he is sanctifying the waters. When we take the blessed water into someone's home we are showing that the home is also a blessed place, a sanctified place where we can worship the Trinity."
First Published March 6, 2011 12:00 am
