16: How To Catholify Your Home

Today, we're going to be talking about homemaking, and this is a topic that I really love and have grown to love even more, especially as I became a wife, um, and just have really spent time making our house into a home the past few years of marriage and today we're specifically going to tie it into our family. Faith. Uh, the topic is how to Catholify your home.

And I did a series of reels on Instagram over the past, like two years or so, and they always do really well and people love, love, love the content in them. So I thought, why not chat about it on the podcast? I think this is a topic that a lot of us are interested in, how to bring the faith into our home, how to maybe tell our family story in our home, or really show our personal family devotions of the faith and the beauty of the church. into our home.

Um, and I think that this is really important for Catholics to hear because the home is the primary place usually where your faith blossoms. So I don't know if you've heard of the term at domestic church, but if you haven't, basically it means that Our direct family, right? Like the family that you grew up in or your family, you know, if you are married, your family that you live with right now, your spouse and children, that's your primary family. That's also called your domestic church.

And it basically means it's like the nuclear family. That's part of like the wider family of the church. But in that small nuclear family, that's where the faith is born and nurtured primarily. And Continuously throughout your life as well as being formed and nurtured by the wider church and our priests. And so as Catholics, we're really encouraged to build our domestic church at home. And that's both spiritually, and I would even dare to say physically as well.

Like how can we bring like physical aspects of the church into our home to inspire our faith lives and to inspire the spiritual growth of our families. So this is kind of what I mean by Catholify your home. It's just bringing these aspects of the church alive into your home so that if somebody were to be able to walk into your home, they know that you're a Catholic and I wouldn't just do it for that. Like I'm not, I'm not just saying, you know, decorate your home.

With Catholic items so that people know you're Catholic. It's both, like I said, for your primary family as well as the people that you invite into your home. So one, so that you can cultivate this nourishment, this spiritual nourishment in your family within your home, as well as take the opportunity to evangelize through beauty, uh, as you welcome people into your home when you're hosting.

And there's just a few like basic, simple things to start with that I think every Catholic home should have. And then from there you can build upon that and bring out, like I said earlier, like your specific devotions that you really love. Maybe that maybe you're really devoted to the sacred heart of Jesus. And so you want to have a painting of the sacred heart of Jesus or an emblem of the sacred heart of Jesus. Or maybe you went on a trip to the Holy land and it really interested you.

impacted your faith life or the way that you approach scripture and you have a painting. I'm talking about myself here. I have a painting of, uh, the hemorrhaging woman, but it's from the perspective of her feet and like all the feet that were in the crowd in that moment. And you can see a woman's hand reaching to touch the cloak of Jesus. And when she touches the cloak of Jesus's finger, there's like a light that emanates emanates.

Radiates, I don't know what word I'm trying to use, radiates from her finger to show like that power that left Jesus. And that Bible verse has always really spoken to me and spoken to me about deep radical faith and trust in God. And I saw in the Holy Land, it was a place called Magdala, the actual like original painting, which is like, Oh my, I don't even like more than 20 feet wide. Like it's a huge, um, and I bought a, a print of it. It's not a small print.

It's like four feet long or something or five feet long. And I have it up in my house. And for example, that's just like one example of something that's really specific to my faith life and my family story that I wanted to bring into our home and a beautiful story when people ask, like, where did you get that painting? And I'm able to just share a little bit about my life.

But before you get into those more intricate, more personal devotions, I think that there's a few basic things that every Catholic home should have. It's those classic Catholic staples, um, that we're going to go into today. So the first is to have a crucifix in your home. And I would say at least have one in your bedroom or in every bedroom.

And then I would also recommend having one kind of in like a public area of your home, maybe your living room or your kitchen, somewhere, where you're going to be hosting people and welcoming people or gathering as a family. Um, it doesn't hurt to have one in multiple rooms, but I would definitely have one in your bedroom. And if you can have one in like one of those big gathering places or social places in your home. This is for multiple reasons.

One of them being that having a crucifix marks our homes, that we belong to Christ, right? That we are Christians. And second of all, it's an image of sacrifice. It's a reminder of Jesus's sacrificial love for us and the sacrifice he made to lay his life down for us. And I love looking at the crucifix inside my home because my vocation, your vocation, our vocations are our path to heaven as beautiful as they are. They are our own cross to heaven. Because vocations aren't just easy.

There's so much beauty to them. Yes, but they're sanctifying, which means that there's struggle, which means that there's sacrifice and stretching and pruning. And so having a crucifix, maybe in the kitchen to look at while you're doing dishes or in your bedroom to see every morning when you wake up is just a reminder to lay your life down for your spouse or for your family. Or if you aren't married yet.

For, you know, the roommates that you have in your home to lay your life down and love people in a sacrificial way and just learn to serve and to give of yourself. And thirdly, a crucifix is such a helpful tool for prayer. Just gazing at a crucifix can be a moment of prayer.

It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, but there's something so powerful of just spending a few moments in silence, gazing at Jesus on the cross and giving him whatever is weighing on you or thanking him for the sacrifice that he made to save you. There's really special moments that can be had when you just have time alone with Jesus and meditate on his crucifixion. So, like I said, having one or two of those in your home is a beautiful, beautiful way to do that.

Number two is having holy water in your home. Again, I would have one in each bedroom. And maybe by the front door or just somewhere that it can be easily accessible. And just having a beautiful holy water bottle will actually draw you to it more and remind you to actually use holy water. I don't know about you, but I feel like ourselves included. And a lot of people that I know, like, we know holy water is good, but we're not actually using it as much as we could.

It's just kind of there for decoration sometimes, but I think if you place the holy water bottle in strategic places to where you're going to see it often, or you know, by the door or on your nightstand before you go to bed, so you can bless your husband or bless yourself before you go to bed will actually make it so you use it more often and receive the graces from it because holy water is a sacramental given to us by the church. And it's for two reasons.

It allows us to bless ourselves as well as remind ourselves of our baptism. And in our baptism, we are called to repent and believe in the gospel. That is our baptismal call as well as to take on our truest identity of a son or daughter of God. And so every time that you bless yourself with holy water, you can now meditate on that a little bit if you didn't know that already, but really make that moment a moment of prayer, a quick one, a moment of prayer where you remember your baptism.

Remember you are a son or daughter of God, or take a moment to just Repent for your sins and say, Jesus, I believe in you. I trust in you. Thank you for saving me. And just receive his fatherly blessing and protection. My third piece of advice would be to have a family Bible. So this can be just like a larger Bible. I have a few Bibles. I have like a little travel size one that I keep in my purse. Or we also have like a big one that has room to journal in the margins.

Um, we also have another one. I think it's the word on fire. One has like a nice, like leather binding and beautiful photos in it. Um, not real photos, but paintings and little like reflections throughout scripture. And so I just encourage you to, to pick a Bible, uh, preferably one. I think that is big because it's just beautiful. And have it somewhere in your home where everybody can access it.

I would even just say, display it, like create a little home altar where you can display the word of God and create a space of prayer for your family. I think the beauty of doing this as well is that it makes the faith a public thing that is shared within families. There are a lot of aspects of. Your faith that are personal, but at least for us, we don't want our faith to just stop there. We don't want our faith to just be a private and personal thing.

We want our faith to be something that we can share with our whole family. And when we have children, be an example for our children and invite them into prayer and model for them how to have a relationship with Christ.

And so a great way to set that culture is to have a family Bible and some ideas of how to use it is, you know, you could read the gospel on Sundays before you go to mass and just kind of review it before you all go to church so that everybody knows, you know, what the gospel is going to be, and you have some more time to reflect and meditate on it.

Or maybe you pick every night, uh, during an evening where you just read one of the readings of the day or the gospel of the day, or you pick a book that you read as a family. And if it's not every day, that's feasible to, to pray together. You pick maybe once a week where you do like family Bible study and it can just be 30 minutes.

You pick a Psalm or a gospel or a passage and just read it and take a few moments of silence for everybody to pray quietly and see what the Lord is speaking to them and then share as a family, you know, what people felt like the Lord was bringing up in their hearts. I think this is an example of how your domestic church can really be lived out and can really be vibrant, right?

Because if you are gathering as a family or with your roommates or with your spouse around the word and studying the word and getting to know the word more deeply. You are being fed in your faith primarily in your home and have this solid foundation for when you go out into the world. The solid foundation of, yeah, who, whose am I? I'm the Lord's, I'm a son or daughter of God. This is the truth that I have heard in the word. This is how God calls us to live.

You just have that foundation that builds your character and yourself so that when you can go out into the world, you can be a reflection of Christ and you can be the light of Christ in the world. Next would be to have an image of Mary in your home. And this can be either a painting or a like plaque on the wall. A statue is a very common way that Catholics bring Mary into their home. And just a reminder, this doesn't mean that we're worshiping her, right?

This is just a form of veneration and honor. Jesus loved his mother so much. He gave her to us at the crucifixion and said, John, behold, your mother, mother, behold, your son. And he commanded John to welcome her into her home. And in the same way, we're called to do that. We're called to welcome Mary into our home and into our lives and allow her to be our mother and guide us to Jesus. and another way to bring Mary into your home would be to have rosaries.

You could even display a rosary and I know that there's maybe some controversy about this. Some people don't like to display rosaries as decorations and people do. And I would, you know, kind of beg to differ here and say that you're not putting it out for it to be a decoration and just sit there. But I like having rosaries in different parts of my home to inspire prayer and to remind me, Oh yeah, I'm just going to grab it right now and pray.

Or. It's just a visual reminder of like, okay, I'm going to do the dishes and throw on a rosary on Spotify, or I'm going to, you know, take a lunch break really quick and then walk around my backyard and pray a rosary really quick, but just having rosaries in different parts of my home inspires prayer and inspires thoughts of prayer throughout my day and can serve as an invitation for you guys also to come together as a family to pray the rosary.

And don't worry, you can never love Mary too much. Uh, that was something that St. Maximilian Kolbe would say and it's true. Bringing Mary into your home in these different ways doesn't mean that you are loving her more than Jesus or putting her above Jesus, but really just showing your devotion to her. And your love for the blessed mother. And this is a beautiful way to Catholic fire home. Okay. Lastly is place items of prayer around your home to inspire prayer.

And I kind of just started talking about that with the Rosaries, but you can do this with Holy cards or like I said, Catholic art, like a image of immaculate heart or sacred heart, these specific images that really inspire a moment of devotion or a moment of prayer.

And this doesn't mean that you have to stop throughout your day and just like, Pray for like three hours every time you see something, but having faith filled items in our home allows us to have thoughts of our faith and thoughts of Christ, like continuously on our hearts, on our minds. And we're more intertwined with Christ.

And we almost like open ourselves up more to the Holy spirit and how he wants to work in our life because we're directing our attention more and more to Christ when we are being reminded of him in the church throughout our day. So I feel like that really sums up what I feel like are the basic things to catholify your home if you don't already have those things. And then if you do already have those things, I would really encourage you to go on a pilgrimage.

I feel like this is a way to also really personalize your home and personalize your family faith story and strengthen. The faith of your family is to go on a pilgrimage together, and there's many pilgrimage sites, even in the U. S. You don't have to go to the Holy Land, but if you have a chance to go to the Holy Land or to go to Rome or, uh, maybe Fatima or Guadalupe, I have been to several of these places.

And every time my faith is so strengthened and I try to buy some sort of, uh, image or souvenir or item.

from these places to bring back into my home and again, like tell the family story, tell my faith story through the things that are in my home and being able to show people my love for the faith and the story of our church through all these, you know, years of history of so many different things that have happened within the church, within Marian apparitions, the legacy that Jesus and the apostles left for us and the traditions that are passed down through.

Thousands of years that have led to us. There's so much rich beauty and history and art in our church that is very unique to the Catholic church. It's not something that non denominational churches really have. And so this is a beautiful and unique thing that we have as Catholics. So I encourage you to really catholify your home this year. And like I said, really make it your own, really bring out those special devotions that you have and, build up your beautiful domestic church.

If you feel like you're starting from scratch or you're not really sure where to shop and where to find items like this, westcoastcatholic. co would be my number one recommendation. You know, I'm biased because I personally design all of those items, but it's true. We have a lot of these staples that I mentioned, and we just launched the gorgeous wall crucifix, which is selling quickly the holy water bottle. That is an essential.

And I think by the time this episode comes out, we might have our Marion statue out, and if it's not, then you're getting a really early, really exclusive sneak peek here. But, um, if it's not out, you know, Keep it on the down low, but we are going to be having a gorgeous, uh, it's actually going to be called the Madonna and child statue. It is a beautiful statue of Mary and her motherhood is portrayed so fiercely, so gracefully, so wonderfully.

Um, it all came to life from a sketch that I did at a coffee shop once. And I was like, Oh my gosh, we need to make this into a statue. So if it's out, you might already know about it. If it's Not released. I can't remember when this podcast episode is going to be released, but if it's not released by then, now, you know, so get ready and make sure you're checking back at westcoastcatholic.

co for all these beautiful modern Catholic home items to fill your home and Catholify your home and help you build a wonderful domestic church.