The Church in the Home

What it is

The Second Vatican Council calls the family “so to speak, the domestic church”: the place where parents are the first to hand on the faith to their children, by word and by example (Lumen Gentium 11). A Catholic home has a life of prayer of its own: grace at the table, the Angelus at noon, prayer together at night, a blessing at bedtime, the feasts kept, the children’s baptism days remembered. It is the children’s first step into the liturgy of the whole Church (Familiaris Consortio 61). This tool helps you keep that prayer, one night at a time, in whatever your house looks like: a husband and children, a mother on her own, a widow, a couple without children, a woman who lives alone, a house whose children have grown and gone.

Mary kept the house of Nazareth, and the Church sees in Mary the image of what the Church herself is called to be (Lumen Gentium 63; CCC 967). The work of this tool is ordinary and hidden in the same way: a candle, a reading, a question at the table, a cross traced on a child’s forehead.

How to use it

Tonight

Each night the tool chooses one family prayer by the Church’s calendar: a feast’s own reading on a feast, a reading from the season’s set on other days, and a reading about Our Lady on Saturdays in Ordinary Time. You lead it from your phone, one page at a time: gather, the Word (from the Douay-Rheims Bible), a question for each child by age, a petition to the Holy Family, the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be, and the blessing of each child by name. Choose five minutes or ten. The ten-minute form adds the saint of the day, prayers for your intentions and the traditional devotion of the weekday (the old custom of “the week sanctified”). On a child’s name day it turns to the patron you recorded for that child. If you live alone, the same prayer speaks to you alone, with a question in your own voice.

The streak

A kept night is a night of prayer in your house: the family together, or you alone if you live alone. The count is strict: one missed night ends the run, and the next night is night one again. Tonight never counts as missed while it is still tonight. If you prayed last night and forgot to mark it, mark it (“We prayed last night”) and the run is restored. There are no grace days.

The house rule

Choose what your household can really keep: the Morning Offering, grace before and after meals, the Angelus at noon (the Regina Caeli in Eastertide), family prayer at night, the blessing at bedtime, Sunday Mass together, and one practice of your own for feasts. Tick each as it is kept, see the last seven days at a glance, and print the rule for the refrigerator door.

The children

For each child: the patron saint and the patron’s feast (the child’s name day), the baptism day and how many years ago it was, and a tracker for First Confession, First Holy Communion and Confirmation. In the Latin Church, law presumes the use of reason at about seven and makes it first the duty of parents, with their pastors, to prepare children who have reached it for confession and First Communion (Code of Canon Law, can. 97 §2 and can. 914). In the United States, Confirmation in the Latin Church is given between the age of discretion and about sixteen, within limits set by each diocesan bishop (the U.S. bishops’ norm for can. 891). Eastern Catholic children receive Chrismation and Holy Communion at their baptism (CCC 1244); follow your own Church’s practice. Your parish sets the real dates. Children you record once in your Regina profile are shared with the other Regina tools that use them. If a child has died, the tool remembers that child on the child’s days and through November, and no longer names the child at the blessing.

The prayer corner

The Catechism commends a prayer corner, with the Scriptures and holy images, as a little oratory where the family prays together (CCC 2691). Build yours a piece at a time: a crucifix, an image of Our Lady, an open Bible, a candle, holy water, a cloth in the colour of the Church’s season, the patrons of the house, a place to kneel.

Blessings

Blessing belongs to the priesthood every Christian receives at Baptism, so lay people may lead certain blessings (CCC 1669); that common priesthood differs in kind from the ordained priesthood (CCC 1547). A mother’s blessing is not a priest’s blessing: she asks God to bless her child. The tool gives the old blessing of the Book of Numbers (6:24–26), prayed by a mother as a petition: “The Lord bless thee” asks God to bless. Lay people give certain blessings by reason of their own office, as parents do for their children, as the U.S. bishops explain. The tool also gives the Epiphany chalking of the door, how to ask a priest or deacon to bless your home, and prayers for the protection of the house.

The blessing a mother may give

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord shew his face to thee, and have mercy on thee. The Lord turn his countenance to thee, and give thee peace.

Numbers 6:24–26, Douay-Rheims

For a little one at bedtime: trace a small cross on the forehead with your thumb, say the child’s name, and pray these words. For an older child: a hand on the shoulder or a small cross on the forehead, and the same words. For a grown son or daughter: the same words at a visit, at the door, or over the phone.

A hard night

Some nights the house is hurting. The tool keeps a quiet door open to help: the five steps of Regina’s crisis protocol for despair, a strained marriage, fear at home, the dark after a birth, or the loss of a baby, with the hotlines checked on their own official sites. On a night about forgiveness the tool says plainly that forgiving never means staying in danger. If anyone is in danger now, call 911.

Your data

Everything you enter (your children’s names and dates, the nights you prayed, the house rule) is kept in this browser on this device. There is no account, and nothing is sent to us unless you choose to turn on Regina Key sync, which sends only a locked copy we cannot read. You can export or delete it on Your data.