Spotlight on Safeguarding: Mick Thurley
February 7, 2025
Charismatic Gathering with Bishop Peter at Cathedral
February 10, 2025
Marriage and Family Life Coordinator, Dr Antonia Braithwaite, highlights the benefits of creating a family home altar as a dedicated space for prayer, using liturgically coloured cloths, religious icons, candles, and flowers to deepen faith and engagement.
Help us, O Loving Father, to make our family another Nazareth where love, peace and joy reign. Help us to stay together in joy and sorrow through family prayer.
Thus, Saint Teresa of Calcutta encourages us to deepen our prayer life, not just as individuals but as a family. But how do we create the space for family prayer, in the home as well as at mass?
Of course, we could pray anywhere, but one particularly helpful practice can be to create a family home altar – a beautifully arranged shelf or low table decorated to point us heavenward during family prayers.
There are many creative ways to arrange your home altar or prayer table, but one way is to start by laying a cloth of the liturgically appropriate colour – purple for Advent or Lent, white for feasts, green for Ordinary Time, and red for Pentecost and martyrs’ feast days. Doing so can help develop awareness of the Church year, and if you teach your children to notice these colours, they can proudly rearrange the altar themselves to match the changing seasons.
Next, a candle or two, a crucifix, a religious icon, statue, or picture, and perhaps a prayer card can be placed on the table. A small collection of devotional items can be kept in a basket under the table. These images can be rotated, with just a few on display at any one time, so that the mind is uplifted rather than cluttered during family prayer. A vase of fresh flowers completes the scene.
Children in particular love being part of making a family home altar, but adults too can benefit from the rootedness of a physical prayer spot in the home.
Help us, O Holy Father, to make our families one heart, full of love, in the Heart of Jesus through Mary.
With thanks to Monica Underwood from St Etheldred’s, Ely.
