Many Catholics and Buddhists insist that urns containing the ashes of family members should be placed in a columbarium rather than in a family altar. I must admit that we have three under the ancestral altar inside our house--my father's, my mother's, and my elder son's. When the number of urns increases, all will be placed in a church columbarium, for we do not have a family chapel as others do. Like the fabulous private chapels of Ugu Bigyan and Karl Miranda, which I have visited and admired.

Many reasons have been set forth against keeping such urns. Among those I have heard are that the urns will not be revered properly (untrue in our case because our ancestral altar is the center of prayer in our house, where oil lamps are lit every evening and flowers and candles are offered on special occasions), that houses with urns become haunted (also untrue because the most haunted sites are churches), and that the presence of urns generates a heavy feeling (again untrue because I have never felt more safe and more secure on rainy days, for example, when cemeteries are wet and flooded).

I have noted that the presence of urns, like the presence of menstruating women, amplifies the power that resides in ancestral altars. The urns contain relics of loved ones who can be prayed for intercession as we pray to saints for intercession. They are also reminders that such power is not exclusive to churches and temples alone.