With prayers, song, incense, and blessings, all the Sisters lined the hall of the main floor leading to the foyer and celebrated the Blessing of the House. Part of the annual ceremony is the ritual of marking the lentel of the entrance with the current century, the initial of each of the Maji (Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar) who came bringing gifts for the infant Jesus, and the current year.
At another point in the ceremony the prioress wafts incense as she walks down the hall between the two lines of Sisters. The smoke from the thurible represents the prayer or blessing that their prayers will rise with the smoke and be pleasing to God. The prayer this night for the coming year is for the House, the work done within it, and the Sisters and for protection of the House and its dwellers from evil.
This annual ceremony reminds the Sisters of their common bond in Community within this building, and of their common goal of life, “that in all things, God may be glorified.”