The Rule of Our Family’s Domestic Church
The Rule of Our Family’s Domestic Church
General Introduction Concerning The Discipline of the Our Family’s Domestic Church
This is the Rule of our family’s Domestic Church. It is imperative that a given domestic church consciously craft a rule whereby it expresses the life of the church according to its own family culture. Even when consciously crafted, these rules are generally not written out because a domestic church must be dynamic and adaptable, unlike consecrated life, which thrives on the stability of order.
Domestic Rule and Diarchic Primacy
Given the necessity of adaptability the first rule of our family’s Domestic Church concerns the principle of Diarchic Primacy. Domestic churches are traditionally run by diarchy. In consecrated life, the rule runs the people and they conform themselves by discipline. In a domestic Church, the people dynamically and adaptively create the rule in order to engage the world and present their Christian lives most effectively. Therefore, even in the most rigid situation, such as this where there is a written rule for a domestic church, the particular rules of the domestic church are always subject to dispensation or adaptation by the diarchy. All rules of any domestic church are subject to the rule of the greater church.
Guiding Philosophy: Nutial Dyadinal Balance
The general point of engaging in diarchial leadership is to allow for nuptial balance. As male and female the diarchy tends to represent the duality inherent in the cosmos which, according to Christian ontology, is also a unity by relationship. Queuing into this idea the diarchy of our family’s Domestic Church takes as its guiding philosophy diadinal nuptial balance. In as much as we display what seems like conflict, our primary goal will be to bring that conflict into harmony by cross-spectral balance or objective relational harmony through a process of development.
Power Dynamic of the Our Family’s Domestic Church
The Diarchy of tour family’s Domestic Church adapts as its rule of authority Christian power dynamics. Christian power dynamics are a power structure informed by proper humility and beatitude where “the greater serves the lessor”. Thus the diarchy is not to lord its authority over the little ones of the domestic church as the Gentiles do. They must rule by service to the exhaustion of their own being. Taught by this example, the same is true among the little ones of the domestic church as well. Any skill or superiority is utilized for the benefit of all, and especially those weaker or more vulnerable.
Sacramental Life and Guiding Analogy
Each vocational path has a narrative that has a heavenly component and a terrestrial manifestation. For the path of marriage, the heavenly component is God as Trinity and the exercise of divine love as trinitarian love. As the Catechism states, married love is caught up in divine love. Marriage in its ideal perfectly images God, as is made clear in the terrestrial manifestation of this story. When God creates humanity in Genesis chapter one he specifically says, “Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. . . . God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
The imago dei is not just stamped onto the individual, but also onto the married couple. The trinitarian dynamics that nuptial love is meant to be a sacramentally manifest in the lives of the married couple. Their bodies are the sacramental matter that signs of divine love.
To this end, the guiding motive for the Diarchy of our family’s Domestic Church is to express this life by means of our lives by a sacramental existence and through appropriation of the narrative of Prelapsarian Eden and through the development of the human family through salvation history giving special attention to the Holy Family.
The Discipline of Our Family’s Domestic Church Concerning
Domestic Cult
Cult of the Mantle
The Mantle of our family’s Domestic Church is the center of the familial cultic activity and para liturgy.
Morning prayer: begins at 4:30 am
The Pater Familia checks and folds peddle from the previous day’s votives
The Pater Familia checks water levels in the holy water fonts
Prayer begins by waking the altar with a votive and reverberation
Prayer includes acknowledgment of relics the Litany of our family’s Mantel, Readings of the day, Saints of the Day, and The office of readings and Astro-Kinetic Contemplation.
A focal card is pulled, placed at the bottom of the deck and placed facing out in the vicinity of the shrine of Martha the dominator.
Each morning the family should perform communal sharing of somnium spirituality. Each member should relay forays into the dream world and mutually explore meaning and significance.
If the house is to be occupied for the duration of at least an hour, the mantel should be awake
The awakening of the mantel is signified by ignition of the center votive and the seasonal colored candle
The center votive should be lit first by means of a wooden match.
All other candles should be lit off of the center votive by means of a wooden match.
On regular intervals, the Pater Familia will sculpt votive Flowers of prayer
Prayer Flowers are sculpted using five votive tins and a wick base from the votives burned at the center of the mantel.
As Prayer Flowers are made Incense should be burned and the fastened parts held in the smoke with prayer.
Flowers are too used in occasional shrines, random momentos, prayer gifts, and during the Dom-Rite in the weekly liturgy.
On the feast of each child, they are to engage in digital ritual with the painting of their namesake.
Cult of Martha the Dominator
Saint Mary sits at the feet of the master and contemplates. Saint George slays the dragon. Saint Martha tames the dragon. The dragon is worldly engagement and worldly calculation. In ways that are dangerous this dragon must be slain, but it is a particular skill to tame a dragon.
Our Domestic Church is particularly devoted to St. Martha the Dominator, who takes her anxiety and stress concerning the world and tames and sanctifies it. She is our house’s particular intercessor in the collect of the Mass where our labors are offered to the Lord. She is our teacher and example of how we interact with the world.
The shrine of Martha the Dominator resides in the life center of the house where very being of the domestic church is sustained.
Martha keeps the candles for the year in deference to our use of time.
When it is safe, the seasonal candle should burn in front of Martha while the focal card of the day is displayed. Otherwise, it may be burned on the mantel or the hearth (stove).
Martha keeps one vial of healing oil and one vial of holy water for use during illness and spiritual direction.
When the meal is prepared Saint Martha the Dominator is acknowledged as one who is with us as we do out part to sustain our individual lives and the life of our domestic church.
Martha watches over each meal. She prays and sings with the family as we sustain our lives in the meal.
Any offerings made to God through Martha the Dominator are particularly offerings of our labor to manage stress and harness dynamism in order to bring the sacred to the secular by our very lives.
Cult of Seasonal Affinity
The patronage of Martha the dominator implies the use of the exterior world. To this end, our family’s Domestic Church should make great effort to utilize the liturgical seasons as a macro symbol of cosmic engagement.
The seasonal candle which is the liturgical color of the day is burned according to the above-mentioned rubric.
During Advent, the wreath is added to the already existing rubric according to the traditions of the greater church. The same rubrics of length are applied to the burning of the advent candles in our family’s Domestic Church.
Our family’s Cultic Ritual concerning the Advent/Christmas season should represent the transition of the secular to the sacred such that little ones of the domestic church can appropriate this transition.
From the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day to the first day of Advent the domestic church may decorate with secular decorations (Secular Santa, Snowmen, Reindeer, holly, Christmas tree etc.)
From the First Sunday of Advent to the Fourth Sunday of Advent put up CHRISTMAS decorations. (Advent wreath, Nativity scene, sacred images, sacred candles, etc.)
From Fourth Sunday of Advent till Christmas Eve, slowly take down secular decorations.
On Christmas eve, add baby Jesus to the manger, replace the advent Candles with a center white candle
From the second day of Christmas till the Epiphany slowly take down CHRISTmas decorations
After the epiphany solemnly deconstruct the nativity and put up epiphany (Mardi Gras) decorations
A solid flag of the liturgical color of the day should be flown outside the domestic church.
When appropriate the Pater Familias will wear a seasonally colored bandanna from his left leg just below the Second Day Totem
On Holy Thursday, each Member of the Domestic Church shall wash the feet of one member younger than they are. The greater serves the lessor.
The fourteen Stations of the Cross Candles should be lit on Good Friday
Flowers are to be used in the house as a sign of season and of contingency.
Flowers should generally be present on the front table along with auxiliary seasonal decor.
General Guide:
Red and white flowers for Christmas
Neon festive flowers for Mardi Gras
Roses in February
Twigs, feathers, ash, and sand during Lent
White, yellow and pastel flowers during Easter
Bright flowers during summer
Earth tone flowers and small squashes during fall
Flowers may also be offered on the shrine of Martha to symbolize our engagement with the world yet how this world and our engagement is beautiful but passing.
The Discipline of Our Family’s Domestic Church Concerning
Paraliturgical Engagement and Extra Domestic Cult
Para-Liturgical Engagement
The domestic church walks to church every Sunday
Dispensation is offered if there is a 50% chance of rain or the temperature dips less than 50 degrees
The little members of the domestic church generally walk 3-6 feet ahead of the Diarchy
Seasonally appropriate flowers may be gathered to show respect to Saint Martha the Dominator
Flowers are not to be gathered from private property
The Pater Familia will prep the walking bag every Sunday
The bag should contain water for the walk
The bag should contain three fruits for the walk back from church
The bag may contain books to entertain the little members of the domestic church. The books should be religious in nature.
The bag should contain one wooden container that holds one prayer flower and two quarter coins for the Dom-Rite
The bag should contain non-perishable food for the Dom-Rite
The bag should contain any empty holy water bottles that need to be filled
The bag should contain sacral meditative momentos
Each mass members of the domestic church should engage in the Domestic Rite (Dom-Rite / our family’s para liturgy) at the Altar of Saint Anthony.
The Dom-Rite begins by participants opening the eyes of Saint Anthony
A small offering of food is to be brought to the Mass to feed Christ by his presence in the poor
The food is offered by the little members of the domestic church during the Dom-Rite
A Candle is lit at the Altar of Saint Anthony
This Candle is the parent candle of the center votive on our family’s Domestic Church’s mantel and signifies that candle's connection to the greater liturgy.
The little members of the domestic church may perform this action appropriate to their skill. Even the smallest member can offer the two quarter coins and/or blow out the igniter
The Pater family offers the prayer flower from our family’s Mantel to Saint Anthony the Theurgist for miraculous intercession and protection. This flower is the parent flower of all other Prayer Flowers that leave the guardian mantel.
Family Meeting
Every Sunday the domestic church will meet in order to organize community life
Preferably this meeting happens directly after Sunday mass.
Items proper to discussion include:
Daily tasks for the week
Virtues to be particularly practiced for the week
Vices to particularly be avoided for the week
Extra Domestic Cult
Prayer Flowers
Prayer Flowers are to be offered to those who the domestic church prays for.
Each of our family’s Shrine should contain at least one prayer flower to activate it
Prayer Flowers should occasionally be randomly left about for people to find.
Shrine Ministry
Our family’s Shrines are to be occasionally built and left in public places in order to bring beauty and awareness into the world.
Each shrine must contain at least one Prayer Flower
Each shrine must contain an image of a saint or of Christ
Each shrine must contain elements from the immediate environment
Each time the domestic church camps a camping shrine should be erected
The Discipline of Our Family’s Domestic Church Concerning Respect for the Gift of Life Through Nutrition and Temple Engagement
General Rule for Nutrition
Food should be prepped as much from scratch as much as possible allowing for the temporal vice of modern society.
Meals should be taken in absolute common as much as possible allowing for the temporal vice of modern society.
Prayer is to be said before the evening meal. Singing before the evening meal is the standard custom.
When the Day is Green
The domestic church abstains from meat unless it’s Sunday
The patriarch of the diarchy keeps the standard fast: one meal one snack
When the Day is White/Gold or Red
Meat is permitted at solemn and high feasts
The patriarch of the diarchy may break the standard fast
When the Day is Purple
The domestic church abstains from meat including Sunday
The domestic church keeps the standard fast
Dessert consists of fruit
The Patriarch of the diarchy keeps the strict fast: one meal a day
Personal abstinence applies
When the Day is Pink
Pink Days are a high feast for Our Family’s Domestic Church
All of the faithful of our family’s Domestic Church are required to eat tacos
Nutritional Guidelines for Cult of Physiological Synchronicity of Eve to the End of Respect for Procreation
The Patriarch will supply wine and chocolate offering to the Matriarchal Temple in honor of the Physiological Synchronicity with Eve
Proclaimed Feasts
The Diarchy may proclaim a solemn or high feast for the domestic church on a singular or repetitious basis.
On Mary the Mother of the Lord’s birthday the domestic church is to consume a dessert that is colored blue
Christmas Eve oatmeal is eaten by the domestic church.
Mardi Gras: festivity and revelry are required
Generally leading up to Mardi Gras Gumbo, Jambalaya and fried chicken are consumed
All junk food is to be indulged in during from Toth till midnight on the morning of Ash Wednesday
On the afternoon of Mardi Gras, all food is placed out for general consumption and all licit comfort activities are engaged in, each to his own desire
On Ash Wednesday the domestic church is to consume Simple Potato Soup for dinner
On the feast of Saint Patrick, the domestic church is to consume Cabbage and Potatoes for dinner
On vigil of the feast of Saint Joseph, the domestic church is to consume Saint Joseph’s Eve Spaghetti for dinner
On the feast of Saint Joseph, the domestic is to consume Minestrone for dinner
On Palm Sunday, the domestic church is to consume Palm Cakes for dinner
On Holy Thursday the domestic church is to consume Flat Bread and Dipping Sauces for dinner. Bread should be dipped directly into the sauce.
On Good Friday the domestic church is to consume Simple Potato Soup for dinner
General Rule for Corporeal Temple Engagement
Each member of the diarchy strives to Walk 5,000 steps with the Lord each day
Structural adornment should be meaningful and mindful
Exterior adornment should be appropriately modest according to the occasion
Exterior adornment should be appropriately simple according to the occasion
Dual Diarchy Temple engagement should be exercised at least twice a week
Matriarchal temple engagement may be lessened or dispensed with when the matriarch is approaching Peak Metaphysical Syndrome or the renewal of her life cycle.
Technique of Temple union should be discussed, analyzed, and shared between the diarchy.
Above all, Salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church, and therefore this domestic church
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