Make Homes into Sanctuaries
We must make the home sacred again! The world is starved for holy space. Secular man will find hope not in lectures or social reforms, but only through encountering holiness. This begins in the parish. It then proceeds to the home. Men, women, married or single, young or old, share this mission. We should be willing to sacrifice everything for it — to create homes and sanctuaries for quiet and nourishment.
“It is in the home that one discovers love and joy, that one learns manners, discipline, responsibility, respect, generosity, and how to relate to others. More than half the battle of life is already won when someone comes from a good family milieu” (Fr. Francis Bethel, John Senior and the Restoration of Realism 213).
But what has become of homes? Bethel observes, “Yet, today the home is often little more than a dreary place of transit where one sleeps and sometimes eats, devoid of common life” (Bethel 213). The home is a concept nearly lost and uncherished in today’s world.
“For a return to civilization, we must therefore restore Realism and Christian culture, and come back to reality and to Christ. But where do we begin?…First of all, it is necessary to cultivate home life” (Bethel 213).
Home Design
We must begin with the physical layout of home. What are the focal points. Is the home designed to foster contemplation and conversation, or entertainment and isolation? Where is the inner sanctuary of the home, the heart, and center? Is it the icon room, the dining table, the kitchen, or perhaps the television or entertainment systems?… The answer to this question is the key to the kind of person formed in the home. The home should focus one’s heart on the heavenly kingdom and the natural world.
“The home itself should be of natural materials, simple and attractive, with harmonious wood furnishings and handmade objects” (Bethel 214).
“It is in the home that one discovers love and joy, that one learns manners, discipline, responsibility, respect, generosity, and how to relate to others. More than half the battle of life is already won when someone comes from a good family milieu” (Bethel 213).
Close to Nature
One should live in a rural or semi-rural area “so that sharpening the senses and tying them to reality would become part of daily life.” If one must live in an urban setting, it is necessary to experience nature through walks or camping. “It would be good to live among animals: domestic ones — cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, horses; and wild ones not far away —ducks, squirrels, rabbits, blue jays.”
Sacred Recreation
Recreation should be tied to nature, active, and always oriented around Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. “Walking in the countryside or across parks, drawing, juggling, horseback riding, golfing and hunting are far superior to video games and watching television” (Bethel 213).
Musical and Literary Life
“The common musical life — family conversation around good reading, poetry and song — is necessary not only for the children’s schooling and discernment, but for every aspect of their existence, for their souls” (Bethel 215).
Senior writes: “What I suggest, not as the answer to all our problems, but as the condition of the answer, is something at once simple and difficult: to put ‘the touches of sweet harmony’ back in the home so that boys and girls will grow up better than we did, with songs in their hearts” (Bethel 215).
Replace the TV with a Fireplace and Tea
“Smash the television set, turn out the lights, build a fire in the fireplace, move the family into the living room, put a pot on to boil some tea and toddy and have an experiment in merriment” (Senior, Restoration of Christian Culture 73).
Our Home Fostering Love
“Then families will be together at home of an evening and love will grow again without thinking about it, because they are moving in harmony together. There is nothing more disintegrating of love than artificial attempts to foster it at encounter groups and the like: Love only grows; it cannot be manufactured or forced; and it only grows on the sweet sounds of music” (Senior, Restoration of Christian Culture 25).