Baptism and Chrismation

What you'll notice

A family is crowded around a font near the front of the church, and the person holding the baby isn't the mother. That's the godparent. Candles burn on the rim of the font and in the hands of the people standing closest. The priest is in white.¹

The first ten minutes are strange even by Orthodox standards. The priest breathes on the baby's face and prays over it, three times, to drive the devil out, in language nobody uses at a baby shower. Then he turns the godparent to face west and asks, three times, whether they renounce Satan "and all his Angels, and all his works, and all his service, and all his pride." Then he tells them to spit. And a grown adult in good clothes spits toward the back door.²

After that it's water and oil. The priest blesses the water at length, pours oil on it, anoints the baby all over, and plunges the naked child into the font three times. The baby, calm until now, objects. Then come a white garment, more oil, a procession around the font with everyone singing, a snip of hair, and, at the chalice, the baby's first Communion.

What it's called

Baptism is the washing. Hapgood's book also calls it "Illumination," because the person passes from darkness into light, and calls the newly baptized the "newly-illumined."³ Chrismation is the anointing that follows at once, with chrism (the Church's consecrated oil, kept on the altar for this).⁴ Together they're the door into the Church; everything else assumes you've come through it.

The book calls the person who answers for a child the Sponsor. Parishes say godparent (Greek nonos and nona, godfather and godmother; the service-book word is anadochos, "one who receives"; Serbian kum). A godparent speaks for an infant at the font, says the Creed on the child's behalf, carries the child around the font, and then spends a lifetime helping raise that child in the faith.

What's actually happening

Turning around

The service begins at the door of the Church's life. Hapgood's rubric is written for an adult: the person stands facing east, barefoot, in a single garment. The priest breathes on his face three times, signs him with the cross, lays a hand on his head, and asks God to "remove far from him his former delusion."⁵ Three exorcisms follow. Then the turn west, the renunciation asked three times and answered "I do," the question "Hast thou renounced Satan?" answered "I have," and the priest's instruction: "Breathe and spit upon him." Then the turn east: "Dost thou unite thyself unto Christ?" three times, and "Dost thou believe in him?" answered "I believe in him as King and as God." The Creed follows, said by the adult, or by the godparent for a child.⁶

Water and oil

The priest asks God to "sanctify this water, by the indwelling of thy Holy Spirit," and to make it "the fountain of incorruption, the gift of sanctification, the remission of sins."⁷ He breathes on it and signs it. Then he blesses olive oil, remembering the dove that brought Noah an olive twig, pours it on the water in the form of a cross, and anoints the person with "the oil of gladness": brow, breast, between the shoulders, ears, hands, feet.⁸

Three times under

Holding the person upright and facing east, the priest immerses them three times: "The servant of God, N., is baptized, in the name of the Father, Amen. And of the Son, Amen. And of the Holy Spirit, Amen." Psalm 32 (31 in the Septuagint), "Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven," is sung, and the newly baptized is dressed in white, "clothed with the robe of righteousness."⁹

The seal

At once the priest anoints with chrism on the brow, eyes, nostrils, lips, ears, breast, hands, and feet, saying each time, "The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit."¹⁰ Then priest and godparents carry the child three times around the font while everyone sings, "As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia."¹¹ Romans 6 and the end of Matthew's Gospel are read.

The washing and the haircut

What used to happen a week later now follows straight on: the priest wipes the chrism away with a wet sponge, saying, "Thou art justified. Thou art illumined. Thou art sanctified. Thou art washed," and cuts a little hair from the head in the form of a cross, the new Christian's first offering to God.¹²

The chalice

The prayer before the chrismation asks for the newly baptized's "participation in the holy Body and the precious Blood of thy Christ."¹³ A baptized and chrismated infant is a full member of the Church and receives Communion from then on, by the spoon like everyone else; in the Russian practice Hapgood records, without confession until age seven.¹⁴ Bringing Kids and Communion say more.

Why it matters

The reading at every baptism is Saint Paul: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."¹⁵ That's the whole rite in two sentences. It's a burial and a resurrection, and it looks like one.

People sometimes treat baptism as a rite of passage that "gets the baby done" or gives an adult a nice memory. It's a crossing of the Red Sea, out of Egypt; it's Noah's ark, which is why Hapgood's appendix says the font typifies it (1 Peter 3:20–21).¹⁶ You come out washed, joined to Christ's death and rising, and adopted: no longer a spiritual freelancer but a son or daughter in a household. The old Jerusalem lectures put it in one phrase: the water "was at once your grave and your mother."¹⁷

Chrismation is your personal Pentecost. The Spirit isn't an outside visitor now but a gift living in you, a seal that marks you as Christ's and equips you for the life you've just been born into. That's when all the "you" commands of the New Testament start to make sense: you aren't told to live this life alone.

And it happens once. The Creed says "one Baptism," and the book says a baptism rightly done, by triple immersion in the Name of the Trinity, isn't repeated.¹⁸ You can walk away from it. You can't unring the bell.

Where it came from

Read the fourth-century Jerusalem lectures that bear Saint Cyril's name and you'll find Hapgood's service already there. The candidates faced west, stretched out a hand "as in the presence of Satan," and renounced him; turned "from West to East, the place of light"; took off their tunics, "an image of putting off the old man"; were anointed with exorcised oil "from the very hairs of your head to your feet"; and "descended three times into the water, and ascended again."¹⁹

Hapgood notes that the rite still keeps its ancient shape, written for adults because the catechumens of the early Church were adults; with an infant, the godparent answers.²⁰ The reception of the catechumen, the baptism and chrismation, and the washing on the eighth day were once three separate services, now joined into one, and in the early Church the newly baptized wore the white robe for eight days of fasting and prayer.²¹ The same notes keep the emergency rules: in extremity a layman may baptize, and a dying child may be baptized by pouring; such a baptism isn't repeated, and the chrismation follows if the child lives.²²

How the Church receives someone already baptized in another church is its own question, with its own canons and history: see How Converts Are Received.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: if you're asked to be a godparent, say yes only if you mean the lifetime part. Hapgood's rule is one sponsor of the child's own sex (a man at least fifteen for a boy, a woman at least thirteen for a girl), Orthodox, with others allowed; in his day a non-Orthodox Christian could stand as an additional sponsor after reciting the Orthodox Creed.²³ Learn the Creed by heart, because you'll say it aloud for the child. Then do the rest: pray for your godchild by name, bring them to Communion, show up on their name day (Family Life, Name Days, and Godparents has more).

If you're visiting: stand where you can see. You won't be asked to renounce or spit, and you won't be asked to sing, though "As many as have been baptized into Christ" comes around enough times that you may find yourself joining in. Expect splashing near the font. Ask the family before you take pictures.

Field Note: the spit. It's the moment every first-time godparent remembers. Facing west, toward the darkness, you've renounced the devil three times, and the priest's book says simply, "Breathe and spit upon him." The spit is for him, not for anyone in the room: the last word you'll ever give the devil before you turn your back on him and face east.

Go deeper

• Hapgood, Service Book, Holy Baptism and Chrismation, pp. 272–286, with the explanations on pp. 601–603.
• Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses 1–3 (NPNF2 7).
• "The Mysteries: A Field Guide to the Sacraments of the Orthodox Church," Simply Orthodox.
• Go to a baptism. Then read The Path In and How Converts Are Received.

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