Catholic and Loving it!

When a person becomes a Catholic, people often talk about them as "coming home" - in the sense that the Catholic Church is everybody's spiritual home. Being a Catholic in England today is like coming home to find your house has been burgled.

Then you realise the house wasn't burgled at all. Your parents just decided it would be a good idea to smash everything and throw it out on the street. Being a young Catholic family in Britain in 2009 is largely a matter of picking around in the wreckage and seeing what you can find.

Word on the street says it's been a custom since the Middle Ages for people to have their homes blessed at Epiphany (which is news to me). It's not practical to have the priest go to every home in one day (unless he is Father Christmas) so a tradition arose whereby the priest would bless chalk at Epiphany and people would use the chalk to bless their homes.

The blessing (which is in the 1964 roman ritual) goes like this...

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: May He also be with you.

Bless, + O Lord God, this creature, chalk, and let it be a help to mankind. Grant that those who will use it with faith in your most holy name, and with it inscribe on the doors of their homes the names of your saints, Casper, Melchior, and Baltassar, may through their merits and intercession enjoy health in body and protection of soul; through Christ our Lord.
All: Amen.

You then use the chalk to write the year and the initials of the three Magi (Yes, we all know the Bible doesn't mention any names or numbers of Magi, you're very smart, shut up) on the lintel of your door. Like this:

20 + C + M + B + 09

If you're one of those folks who hates fun and likes to stress about names (we don't have any) and numbers (we don't know) of "kings" (the Bible says wise men) then you can take comfort in the fact that CMB may also stand for "Christus Mansionem Benedicat" which even a fool like me can see is Latin for "Christ Bless this Mansion". Fr Z suspects that's just a clever backronym though he was too cool to actually use the word backronym.

I hope our Bishop will turn out to be the kind of guy who says no to the Bishops Conference and puts Epiphany back on the 6th where it belongs instead of the nearest Sunday. He can do that sort of thing in his own diocese and I would seriously urge him to do so - I dare say I'm not the only one.

That would be awesome. Then we could go to Mass on the feast of Epiphany and have some chalk blessed and take it home and write above our doors. These days of course Bishop Drainey would also need to apply for an indult to allow the blessing of dry markers for use on UPVC.

Anyway, I can't help feeling like I should have found out about all this before I was twenty-six and married with a child. It's too late this year - Epiphany (whichever day it was on) is pretty much over. It's been a bit of a non-event to be honest.

I hope that next year (whether Bishop Drainey turns out to be a hero or not) we will make it a bit less rubbish with an Epiphany cake. Oh yes! There is a cake for everything...