Baptisms are common during the season of the Feast of the Epiphany, popularly known as the “Feast of the Epiphany.” Most believers wait for this feast to come to baptize their children who were born within the first year of their life. Only a small group baptizes their children when they reach the age of forty days - as is the Christian tradition - on any day of the year. Baptisms and the prayer of the sanctification of water are accompanied by many customs that do not conform to our Orthodox church tradition. Here are some of the prevailing sayings in this brief summary.

“Father, I have a bottle of water filled with water from the Jordan River, the water in which Jesus Christ was baptized. Can I put it in the font?” asks the mother of the child who is to be baptized. The priest answers: “This water that I brought from the Jordan River is like the water falling from the tap in the house. It needs to be prayed over so that the Holy Spirit may descend and sanctify it through the prayers of the congregation gathered around it. There is no blessed water in itself, but water is blessed through the presence and prayers of the congregation. As far as I know, the water in which Jesus was baptized went into the sea and the river changed!” Hence also the importance of sanctifying the water in every baptism that takes place in the parishes, and not pouring some of the blessed water in advance, even on the days of the Feast of Epiphany and the large number of baptisms. The fact that people are absent from the prayer of sanctification of the water obliges the priest, as the guardian and administerer of the sacraments, to perform the prayer of sanctification in every baptismal service.

But the woman, despite her conviction in what the “father” said, adds: “But the water is blessed by the intention. The river itself was sanctified by the descent of Christ into it, so what is wrong with adding Jordanian water to the font?” The priest replies: “And who is stopping you from emptying your bottle into the font? But that does not mean that we will not pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit to descend upon the water before the child is immersed.”

As for the sanctity of the river, our Holy Church believes that the whole earth, not just the land of Palestine and the Jordan River, was sanctified when our God became man, was crucified, died and rose for our salvation. If Christ was incarnated to make a small part of the world and not others holy and blessed, then we have struck at the whole concept of salvation. The earth is sanctified by the holiness of man and defiled by his sins. Hence the importance of the prayer of the entire congregation present to invoke the Holy Spirit on the waters. You also mentioned in your speech the subject of intention. Our Church does not believe in intention or in the popular saying “According to your intentions you will be provided for,” but rather the Church believes in the active word and the sanctifying action, that is, in prayer.

After baptism, another baptized person was dressed in a cross and next to it a blue bead “to repel the evil eye and keep evil away from him!” The priest asked the boy’s family to throw the blue bead in the trash, “because the cross alone is the protector and the shield that protects the boy from all evil. As for the bead, it is just a bead that neither advances nor delays, it neither harms nor benefits and has no power or strength, so how can those with sound minds believe in its illogical power? If we are truly Christians and believe in the effectiveness of baptism, then we have just recited the prayers in which we rejected Satan and all his falsehoods, expelled Satan and armed the baptized person with the power of Christ and his cross and gave him the sacrament of chrism in which is the Holy Spirit, then he received the body and blood of Christ, so why the bead?”

As for the subject of sanctifying water, there is talk. And in the same way we can talk about the subject of sanctifying oil and the Eucharist distributed in the Mass that we carry with us to our homes... People believe that the blessing of the holy water is automatically transferred to the homes in the bottles that they carry with them, and whoever is absent drinks from it, believing that the effectiveness of the water has reached him, as if there is magic in the matter.

Participation in the prayer for the sanctification of water (and oil and the Eucharist) is essential for the Holy Spirit to descend upon people first and then upon water. Therefore, whoever is absent from prayer and participation - except for good reasons such as travel and illness - will not benefit from a drop of “holy” water, just as the Eucharist will not benefit someone absent from the Mass... because there is harmony between a person’s sanctification of matter and its sanctification of him, meaning that a person’s participation in the sanctification of matter makes this matter effective in his sanctification, and the opposite is not true. Hence, the importance of the prayer that the priest recites in homes in the presence of their residents before sprinkling them with water, so that the Holy Spirit may descend upon them and upon what their homes contain.

Finally, we are required to distinguish in all our blessed seasons and feasts between the honorable tradition on the one hand and the prevailing popular traditions on the other hand, those traditions that make customs that have no depth more important than the meaning and content contained in the church service in order to sanctify the world in truth.

About my parish bulletin
Sunday, January 28, 2001