Rituals, St. Joseph & Stress

We have had a lot of people view our house this week so maybe the real estate market is looking up. We hope so.

Several people have mentioned the urban legend about St. Joseph helping to sell houses so I found the following link interesting.

http://www.snopes.com/luck/stjoseph.asp

St. Joseph is the patron saint of homes and carpenters so I can understand how this legend got started. I really don’t understand why the statue needs to buried in the yard. That part of the legend baffles me and I cannot think of how that practice would have developed. I would have expected the statue to be placed in garden or in a niche in a bookcase.

The Catholic Church is not very happy about this trend and hopes that prayer rather than a superstition will be the choice of desperate homeowners. I find it interesting that when people are desperate for a solution they turn to a ritual for comfort even when that ritual does not seem to make much sense. This is a prime example of how important rituals are even in an age that tends to sweep them aside as ancient relics.

Rituals are important because they invest common acts with special significance. This is comforting because it allows us to pause and recognize an important moment in our lives and to reflect on its meaning. A known psychological benefit of ritual is that it helps people transition to new phases of their lives. This can be something as major as the loss of a loved one (Using Ritual with Children and Adolescents by Kenneth J. Doka) or as simple as ordering your day (Positive Rituals and Quality of Life by Michael W. Smull). Rituals help reduce stress by providing a sense of control of our lives. This is one reason that young children like their bedtime rituals to remain the same; it is comforting to have something in your day that is constant.

It is a loss that as we grow older we tend to discard the simple habits that could bring a sense of consistency to our lives. Rituals provide a great deal of benefit for the small amount of time that they require.

So if planting a St. Joseph statue helps you deal with the stress of selling your home, go ahead and get out the shovel. I prefer the more traditional ritual of daily prayers but that may not float your boat. However you decide to incorporate it, investing the moments of your life with meaning is a good practice and one that deserves to be carried forward into the twenty-first century.