Hearth & Altar

Jesus sends seventy-two disciples ahead of him in pairs. He gives them one instruction for the first house they reach. Say, "Peace to this household." He does not tell them to give a speech or to ask what the house can do for them. The first thing a home receives from a follower of Christ is peace, offered before anyone has earned it.

Your home gets a first word every day. It usually comes at the door, in the first minute after someone walks in or wakes up. Sometimes it is "Where are your shoes?" Sometimes it is nothing at all. Jesus asks his disciples to say something different, and to mean it.

He adds a second instruction that families will recognize. If a peaceful person lives there, the peace rests on him. If not, it returns to the one who offered it. Nothing is wasted. You can offer peace to someone in your house who is not ready for it, and it comes back to you and stays in your own hands. That helps on a hard evening.

Today is also the memorial of Thérèse of Lisieux, who died at twenty-four and is called the Little Flower. She believed holiness lives in small things done with love, mostly unseen. A household is made of small things done at the door, at the table, and at bedtime.

Try it for one week. Say the same words at the same door. Children notice a sentence that never changes. By next Thursday they will be saying it back to you, sometimes to each other, and sometimes with an eye roll. The eye roll counts. The sentence is still going into the house.

• For our family, that the first word spoken in our home each day would be a word of peace, we pray to the Lord.
• For every house on our street, that peace would rest on the people who live there, we pray to the Lord.
• For the grace to offer peace again when it has been refused, we pray to the Lord.
• For Saint Thérèse's prayers for our children, that they would learn her little way, we pray to the Lord.

Tonight, when the first person walks through the door, say "Peace to this house" out loud. Ask everyone to say it to the next person who comes home this week.

Tell your children about Thérèse. She was a girl from a French family who entered a Carmelite convent at fifteen and died there in 1897. She wrote that she would not become a great saint by great deeds. She would do small things with great love. She promised that after her death she would let fall a shower of roses. She was canonized in 1925 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

Make her way the household practice for today. Each person does one small hidden thing for someone else and tells no one. Fold a towel that is not yours. Fill someone's water glass. Put away a pair of shoes. At bedtime, ask whether anyone did a hidden thing today. Nobody has to say what it was. Put a paper rose on the table for each person who says yes.