22nd Week of Ordinary Time 2021 - Wednesday - The Christian Home

After casting out the demon in the synagogue of Capernaum, the Lord made his way to the home of St. Peter’s mother in law where he immediately brings healing and peace. The Lord enters many homes throughout the Gospels--bringing healing, truth & transformation. So, too, when we've welcomed the Lord into our homes through faith, he brings healing, enrichment, and peace. 

The Lord Jesus grew up in a home where he witnessed the love of holy spouses, where traditional prayers were learned and recited, where family meals were taken, likely, where extended family and neighbors were welcomed and entertained, where the family trade, St. Joseph’s carpentry was passed down. It was a place of healthy and holy communication, communion, communal prayer, and common time together.

It makes sense that the Lord would choose, not a sterile business office, but a family home—the home of St. Peter’s mother-in-law, as the headquarters for his ministry. In the warmth of family hospitality to a stranger, he planned his ministry, his sermons.. So too, the holy Christian home becomes a center for evangelization, where the members of the family plan together how they, as a family, will spread the word of God out in the world. They will pray together, study God’s word together, in order to be guided, inspired, and emboldened.

The home, for Christians, is not just a place where we eat, sleep, relax, and busy ourselves with hobbies. The home is to be a sort of Church. Certainly, the home is to be a refuge from the chaos and evil out in the world, a secure base of understanding—but also a place where a family discovers how God is calling them to communion with Him, with each other, and to share the Gospel with the world. The various aspects of the entire Church universal—her prayer and worship and turning to the medicine of the sacraments, her charitable outreach to the poor, her teaching the ignorant, her patience and forgiveness of sinners—should all be visible in the Church of the home

The Lord stands at the door and knocks at the doors of many homes, but many in our culture, many swept up in worldliness, refuse him entry. So let us make homes for him and invite others to do the same, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That Christian families may pray together, study the word of God together, and encourage one another to grow in virtue and holiness. 

For an end to indifference to God and human dignity in our government and educational institutions, businesses, and personal attitudes.

During this month of September, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, we pray for all those who grieve, and that we may grieve sufficiently for our sins.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. 

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.