The Home Shrine
The Home Shrine is a place of prayer in the home, a place to honor Mary in the home, a place of grace in the home. In our world today, who can give us the help that we need for every moment of our lives? In our Home Shrine, the Blessed Mother will take care that we obtain what we need and hope for.
“The Blessed Mother wants to withdraw into our little shrine and there educate all the members of the family according to the Nazareth Family Ideal to inspire them anew so that they become deeply religious people. She wants to relieve father and mother of some of the burden of their educational responsibilities. The Blessed Mother, therefore, will not only take care that the children grow up in a pronounced religious and Marian atmosphere, she will take over the responsibility for seeing to it that under her protection and guidance the whole family will navigate victoriously through the secularized atmosphere of our day” (The Home Shrine, pages 51-52).
Vatican II spoke of the family as the domestic Church. The family in the Church is a community of redeemed persons united to each other in love and faithfulness, the well-spring of new life. Each family is a vital cell of the Church and co-determines the fruitfulness and life within the Church. The family received from God its mission to be the first and vital cell of society.
The domestic Church needs constant education in the faith.
The family should be a sign of unity for the world.
The Church of the home should reach out for families who are far from the faith.
The Home Shrine is the visible image of the domestic Church.
The Blessed Mother is the Mother of the domestic Church.
The Home Shrine is making an essential contribution to the Church fulfilling an apostolate. It is the realization of the domestic Church. It is a gift for the Church. From the Home Shrine, the Blessed Mother is better able to renew, educate, and send family members out to renew society and the world and thereby answer the Church’s call to evangelize the world in Christ.
The following topics for the Home Shrine Visit Notes are based on Schoenstatt Sister Marie Day’s DVD Series:
MY HOME, A SHRINE