Each year around the feast of the Epiphany many parishes throughout the world participate in an annual blessing of chalk. It is an ancient tradition that not only places God at the entrance of your home, it places your entire family under God’s protection.
WHAT TO DO: Take the blessed chalk (at the back of each church campus) and first write the initials of the three Wise Men, connected with Crosses, over the inside of your front door (on the lintel, if possible). Then write the year, breaking up the numbers and the year so that they fall on both sides of the initials. It should look like this:
20 C+M+B 20
The “20 “being the millennium and century, the “C” standing for the first Wise Man, Caspar, the “M” standing for Melchior, the “B” standing for Bal-thasar, and the “20” standing for the decade and year. It is also popularly believed that the Kings’ initials stand for
“Christus mansionem benedicat” (“Christ bless this house”).