The Epiphany Home Blessing
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“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart: And thou shalt write them in the entry, and on the doors of thy house.” – Deuteronomy 6:4, 6, 9
Our Heartfelt Thanks
As we come to the close of the year of Our Lord 2024 and the beginning of the New Year, we at The Fatima Center turn to Our Lady with hearts full of gratitude for you, Her devoted clients. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you have done – your prayers, financial sacrifices, and labors of all kinds – on behalf of Our Lady and Her Fatima Apostolate. May She and Her Infant Son, the King and center of all Christian hearts, bless you richly in this joyous Season of Christmas!
Ringing In the New Year
Looking ahead to the New Year, we know that the grace of God will be with us all in every need, even moment by moment, through the loving maternal hands of our Immaculate Mediatrix. How, then, could we fail to have the same confidence and hope that She has bid us to always maintain in Her despite the darkness of our time? “Do not lose heart,” She tells us. “I will never forsake you! My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”
But let us also have our eyes open and our hearts ready to face great trials for the love of God and His most holy Mother. Her Fatima Message and requests, we know, have been spurned. The Church and the world at large will have to answer for this – and indeed, we have been paying a terrible price already throughout the past near-century. Sister Lucia told Father Augustin Fuentes in 1957, almost 70 years ago, that the punishments which Our Lady of Fatima sought to prevent were already falling upon our heads, but a blindness of hearts (a part of that punishment!) prevented many people from even realizing it! There will come a point, however, sooner or later, when the penny will drop and the blinders will fall. People at large will wake up, too late, to the horrifying reality of the world’s situation.
Will the year 2025 be that time when the dire and ubiquitous human sufferings foretold by Our Lady are realized? We do not know. But it marks the beginning of the period that we at The Fatima Center have been signaling as problematic from the perspective of the Fatima prophecies. Toward the end of the coming year, we will enter that 3½ year period between the 100-year anniversaries of Heaven’s formal requests through Our Lady of Fatima for the Five First Saturdays devotion (Pontevedra, Dec. 10, 1925) and the Consecration of Russia (Tuy, June 29, 1929). At Rianjo, Our Lord seemed to indicate that His patience in regard to these requests would not exceed 100 years.
A Special Protection
We would do well, especially now, to avail ourselves of all the special protective helps which Holy Mother Church offers to us. One such devotion carrying powerful graces for our whole families throughout the year is the custom of having a priest come to perform a special Epiphanytide blessing of our homes. You can download the text from the Church’s Rituale for this blessing HERE.
Blessing of Chalk and Water
In connection with Epiphany (January 6th, the Twelfth Day after Christmas), which commemorates the date on which the Magi came from the East to adore Our newborn Savior, there is a special blessing given to water and chalk. The Church only permits these blessings to be administered one day of the year: January 5 for the water and January 6 for the chalk. Both of these bring unique graces which are, literally, only available once a year. You can watch a video or listen to a podcast in which Father Rodríguez discusses these distinctive blessings.
The very powerful sacramental called Epiphany Water represents the water of the Jordan River in which Our Lord was baptized (also on that date of January 6th) and His divinity was manifested audibly by the Voice of the Father (saying, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased”) and visibly by the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. (A third manifestation of Our Lord’s divinity commemorated in the Mass of the Epiphany, having also occurred on that same date, was His first miracle, awakening Christian Faith in His disciples at the marriage feast in Cana.)
Gentile Fathers in the Faith
In the Epiphanytide blessing of homes, the priest uses these unique and powerful sacramentals – Epiphany Water and blessed chalk. He sprinkles the four corners of every room in the house and inscribes the exterior doorways with symbols of Christian faith and the intercession of the Magi, our fathers in the true Faith.
Yes, the Magi who came from the East to adore the Infant Savior are special patrons for the vast majority of Catholics. A bare remnant of faithful souls was found among the Jews to whom Our Lord preached. Throughout the history of the Church, converts from Judaism have remained sparse. The gentile world filled the ranks of the faithful, beginning with those Three Wise Men from the East – Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The miraculous Star of Bethlehem and the inspiration given to the Magi to understand its import heralding the Birth of the promised Redeemer were a sovereign grace bestowed ultimately upon each of us, calling us to the True Faith.
By chalking the doorways of our homes, we not only call upon the aid of these powerful Saints (whom tradition tells us were baptized by St. Thomas the Apostle, and whose relics are kept in the cathedral of Cologne, Germany). We also render public witness to the True Faith to be seen by all who come to our homes, just as the Magi became lights in the darkness of paganism when they returned to their homes in Persia.
Recover and Restore Tradition
Sadly, this beautiful, centuries-old devotion of chalking the doorways of Christian homes has largely fallen out of use in modern times. Many Catholic parishes do not provide blessed chalk to the faithful, and the faithful do not know to ask for it or for their priest’s annual blessing of their homes. But chalking our doors with blessed chalk at Epiphanytide is so important. It makes one’s home a cloister set apart from the world and a respite from corrupting influences for all who live there. We at The Fatima Center urge you to take advantage of this powerful protection against evil in these, our own dark days in which the perverse kings of this world still seek to destroy the Christ Child.
Even if no priest is available to come to your home, the chalking of the doorways can be performed by the head of the household. If your parish does not provide blessed chalk, you can take an ordinary piece of chalk to your priest on the Feast of the Epiphany and ask him to bless it for you with the following prayer:
Bless, X O Lord God, this creature chalk to render it helpful to men. Grant that they who use it in faith and with it inscribe upon the entrance of their homes the names of thy saints, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, may through their merits and intercession enjoy health of body and protection of soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (The chalk is sprinkled with holy water.) Source: Roman Ritual, 1952.
Requesting Blessed Chalk from The Fatima Center
Alternatively, The Fatima Center will have a quantity of chalk blessed on the Feast of the Epiphany for our supporters. You can fill out the submission form below to request that a piece be mailed to you. As a blessed sacramental, there is no charge for the chalk. We ask only a small donation to cover shipping expenses.
One way or the other – preferably by a priest, but if not, then as the head of your household – do take advantage of the powerful protection against evils of all kinds (including evil spirits) available through this devotion.
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We are offering this Blessed Chalk free to you (ONLY accepting US & Canada orders).
If you’d like to support The Fatima Center and/or defray the costs of this effort, please visit: DONATE.
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