First things first, Happy Thanksgiving! As we all gather around the hearth this week, what a great time to reflect on the nature of home and our gratitude for it, for our families in the image of God, and for all the neighbors and friends we hope to bless with our family’s communion.

Thanksgiving brings out the best of home life as we—at least in some form—gather the harvest of the year to share with loved ones. As we settle into enjoying home and family this week, and look forward to Christ the King Sunday, an old maxim offers a personal challenge. To paraphrase, “Your home is your castle.”
 
The saying dates back to 1628, to Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England, “For a man’s house is his castle, and one’s own home is the safest refuge…” Of course, we don’t tend to think of ourselves as kings and queens, and don’t identify much with the idea of royal privilege, trappings, castle, and crown.

So that’s where the challenge comes in. As children of Almighty God, we are royal—like it or not!—and the responsibilities of our king or queenship are linked at the deepest level to Christ the King. We all share in his threefold identity as priest, prophet, and king.

As the Catechism explains, “Jesus Christ is the one whom the Father anointed with the Holy Spirit and established as priest, prophet, and king. The whole People of God participates in these three offices of Christ and bears the responsibilities for mission and service that flow from them” (783).
 
To unpack your royal role further, check this out: “Now Christ has communicated this royal power to His disciples that they might be constituted in royal freedom and that by true penance and a holy life they might conquer the reign of sin in themselves…” Lumen Gentium continues, noting that we are called to spread his “kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace” (36).
 
There’s enough here to reflect on for days, but let’s focus on the idea of our home as our castle. In our Trinity House, we are called to reign—through the authority given us by Christ—over a “kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace.”

In this kingdom, the king and queen do not have subjects in a traditional sense—in fact, in this upside-down kingdom, the royals are the servant leaders, caring wisely and lovingly for any and all who dwell in or visit their kingdom.
 
To make this challenge practical in the “castle” of your home in this week of Thanksgiving—and the third week of the month, when we focus on your Trinity House’s Level 3, Household Economy—we invite you to:

• Reflect in prayer on the reality of your participation in Christ’s kingship.Invite the Lord to heal or remove any obstacles that seem to block the courageous living out of your royal identity.

• Initiate a family-wide conversation about what it means to be a member of Christ the King’s family. Share personally, and explain how Christ has given us power to “conquer the reign of sin” and spread his “kingdom of truth and life.” 

• Go all-in this week on the moments of shared work with your family and demonstrate your royal servant leadership. Yes: we mean cleaning the house…prepping the meal…and washing all those dishes—but try to reframe these “menial” tasks as the very heart of royalty in Christ.

Yes, viewing ourselves as somehow royal may feel like a stretch. But Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, has given us the gift of his threefold office of priest, prophet, and king. And it is up to each of us to receive this identity and live it out in our homes in a special way.

As we celebrate Christ our King this Sunday, may our little “castles”—where we reign and dwell with our families in the royal splendor of the Most Holy Trinity—reflect His “kingdom of truth and life!”