Altar in your home?

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RWMorris

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Do you have an altar in your home? If so, what is on it? Do you use it to pray or simply to remind you of items of your faith? I’m interested in other people’s sacramentals and what works for them.
 
I do. I use it when I pray the morning and evening LOTH. I’ve prayed the rosary in front of it too. It helps me to stay focused, and to see this as a special and seperate time.

How it was put together is a little…haphazard. LoL. It’s an old TV stand that is still in good condition, the kind with a top, and a little cubby where the VCR/DVD player would go, and then a cupboard underneath it. In the cubby I keep prayer cards, candles, a lighter, some books about the faith, my other cloths (I change the color of the cloth and candles to match the litrugical season) and my extra blessed salt. In the cupboard underneath I keep a stereo with Gregorian Chant. On the top I have my Bible and Catechism, two taper candles, a bottle of Holy Water and a little wooden box with blessed salt, a rosary and some medals, my palm branches from Palm Sunday, and statues of Mary, of Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. Hanging over that is a crucifix.

When I’m going to pray I light the candles and turn off the other lights in my room, turn on the chant, bless myself with Holy Water and my tongue with the blessed salt, and then pray. All of this helps me to remember that this is a special time, and that I need to stay pure and true to God everyday. It was cheap to put together too; the statues are from our Christmas nativity scene (get more use out of it!) the cloths and candles I bought for about a dollar each, and the rest of the stuff I mostly had sitting in various places. A home altar doesn’t have to be really grand because the point is to help you focus and remember, at least to me, so do it in a way that helps you.
 
no I do not have an altar because my home is not a church and Mass is not celebrated here. I do have a shrine, hall table facing the front door (where the JWs and Mormons who call regularly get a good view) with a retablo of OL Guadalupe, candles, flowers, and large wall rosary and crucifix. I have a prayer corner in the spare bedroom (off limits when MIL is visiting of course) with a good chair, shelf with bible, rosary, LOTH volume, and daily Roman missal, and journal. there is a small standing crucifix, and depending on the season an icon or image of Christ. I just put away the Ecce Homo carving, and have an icon of the Resurrection there now. If I find a Divine Mercy picture I like I will put it there this weekend.
 
Not an altar, but I have an Icon of Christ with a vigil lamp on the top of my bookcase at home. I have a statue of the Blessed Mother, and an Icon of St. Michael on my desk at work and pictures of St. John Fisher, Thomas More and Per Giorgio Frassetti on the wall in my office.
 
PuzzleAnnie, is there some reason we can’t call it an altar? I wasn’t aware of that.
 
You can call it an altar in a casual sense. The proper term is prayer table or home shrine. However, there is nothing wrong about calling it an altar. Personally, I call my home shrines an altar if having a casual conversation about it becasue it would be the first word that comes to mind. Buddhists or Hindus may call the shrines to their gods altars. So, one should not get too technical about words. Same with personal prayer rooms, I can call it a chapel in a casual sense becasue that would be the first term that comes to mind. However, in the technical proper sense, it is a prayer room because it has not been designated a chapel by the local bishop. Again, people should not be so technical with certain terms in rather casual conversations.
 
I have a candle that is Sacred Heart of Jesus, Jesus, Mary, St Raphael, a rosary, a bible, and a little doiley underneath all of it. I have it sitting on top of my dresser in the bedroom. 🙂 It’s small and simple.
 
I am always changing the prayer altar in my home… My prayer altar is on top of a movable book shelf table…This is how my prayer altar looks right now below:

http://www.geocities.com/paxsalampax/curls/HomePrayerAltar.jpg

You can obviously see the crucifix, statues of the Archangel Raphael (my buddy), Our Lady of Divine Providence (patroness of Puerto Rico… doesn’t hurt that I am Puerto Rican), a statue of Our Risen Lord and two pictures…one of Our Lady of the Mentally ill and the Divine Mercy. There are also two rosaries at the front of the table but are hard to make out in the pic.

I’m thinking to buy table cloths in different colors according to the seasons (Advent, Christmas…etc) and to maintain this as a tradition in my home.

I pray alot in front of this altar and if I find that I can’t meditate and be at peace I will just do some “straight-talkin’” as I call it with Our Lord. I find that having started a prayer routine of morning prayer has helped me maintain a daily prayer practice of praying the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rosary.

God bless
 
Maryam said:
I am always changing the prayer altar in my home… My prayer altar is on top of a movable book shelf table…This is how my prayer altar looks right now below:

http://www.geocities.com/paxsalampax/curls/HomePrayerAltar.jpg

You can obviously see the crucifix, statues of the Archangel Raphael (my buddy), Our Lady of Divine Providence (patroness of Puerto Rico… doesn’t hurt that I am Puerto Rican), a statue of Our Risen Lord and two pictures…one of Our Lady of the Mentally ill and the Divine Mercy. There are also two rosaries at the front of the table but are hard to make out in the pic.

I’m thinking to buy table cloths in different colors according to the seasons (Advent, Christmas…etc) and to maintain this as a tradition in my home.

I pray alot in front of this altar and if I find that I can’t meditate and be at peace I will just do some “straight-talkin’” as I call it with Our Lord. I find that having started a prayer routine of morning prayer has helped me maintain a daily prayer practice of praying the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rosary.

God bless
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What a lovely shrine! It must help your prayer life a lot…?
 
RWMorris said:
What a lovely shrine! It must help your prayer life a lot…?
Click to expand...
Thanks 😃 Yes, it does help alot…especially when I light the candle and turn all the lights off in order to create a more prayerful mood.

Saint Teresa of Avila said that what is the use of prayer if we do not “meditate on whom one is addressing, and what it is he is asking for, and who it is that is asking and of Whom he is asking it”…Meditation goes hand in hand with prayer…so one can move ones lips constantly in prayer… but prayer without meditation comes from the lips and not from the heart.

So I try to set the mood to help me meditate on God…who He is and how numerous His mysteries are… This is how my prayer altar helps me with that.

God bless
 
RWMorris said:
PuzzleAnnie, is there some reason we can’t call it an altar? I wasn’t aware of that.
Click to expand...
just being picky about the word and precise about the meaning. Altar is the table where the sacrifice of the Mass is held, but I am sure everybody here understands we don’t mean that when we are talking about a space set aside in our homes like this.
 
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