Blessings: Water, Homes, and Things

What you'll notice

On Theophany, January 6, the Liturgy ends and nobody leaves. Water is waiting: the font, a big bowl, sometimes a river or a lake. The priest sings over it for a long time, then plunges a cross into it three times while the choir sings about the Jordan. Then everyone lines up to kiss the cross, and the priest sprinkles them, generously, with the new holy water. People who came in their good clothes leave damp and pleased. Then out come the containers they brought from home, to be filled and carried back.

A few weeks later the priest turns up at your door.

What it's called

The feast is Theophany ("God's appearing"; in the West, Epiphany), the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. The service is the Great Blessing of Waters; Hapgood notes it was often called "The Jordan Festival."¹ A shorter Lesser Blessing of Water can be served at other times of year.²

What's actually happening

The water

There are two Great Blessings at this feast, Hapgood explains: one on the eve, in church, and one on the day itself, after the Liturgy, "under the open sky, on rivers, lakes, pools and wells."³ The service opens, "To-day is the nature of water sanctified," and climbs to a long prayer. Three times the priest asks God to "sanctify this water," and then asks him to make it "a fountain of immortality, a gift of sanctification, a remission of sins, a healing of infirmities, a destruction of demons," for all who draw it and drink it, "unto the healing of their passions, unto the sanctification of their houses."⁴ He plunges the cross in three times, singing, "When in Jordan thou wast baptized, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest." The people kiss the cross and are sprinkled, and in Hapgood's book they drink the holy water before they take the blessed bread.⁵ (Visitors can take the bread too; The Cross and the Bread explains it.)

The same prayer tells you what the water is for. It asks blessing on all who "shall be sprinkled therewith, and shall partake thereof, and shall anoint themselves therewith."⁶

The house

In the weeks after Theophany the priest visits his people "in order to pray with them in their homes," asking God "to rid it of every evil and to fill it with every blessing," and blesses the house with holy water.⁷ Hapgood's book also has short prayers for laying a house's foundation and for moving into a new one, the second remembering how Christ entered the house of Zacchaeus "unto the salvation of the same and of all who were in the house."⁸

The fruit

On August 6, the Transfiguration, grapes are blessed after the Liturgy, "this new fruit of the vine." In Great Russia, where there were no vineyards, people brought apples instead, and the book has a prayer for the first fruits of vegetables, each brought in its season.⁹

Everything else

Hapgood prints blessings for a journey by land and by water, for palms, for Easter cheese, eggs and meat, and a short "Prayer for the Blessing of Any Object," which asks God to "send down thy Holy Spirit with a blessing from on high upon this object," and then sprinkles it three times with holy water.¹⁰ One OCA priest's list of what the book of blessings covers runs to "homes, icons, crosses, fruit, flowers, beehives, vehicles, fire engines, ambulances, and so forth."¹¹

Why it matters

"For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:4–5). A blessing is that sentence acted out over a jar of water or a pickup truck.

What does it actually do? The same OCA priest, writing for young people, says a blessing "is not a magical act"; it "recognizes the earth as belonging to God, and earthly objects as means of communication with Him," and holy water is "water that is recognized as gift and sustenance from the hand of our Creator."¹² That's one priest's way of putting it, and it's the only commentary this entry gives. The service itself speaks boldly enough to read on its own terms: when Christ went down into the Jordan, it says, he "sanctifieth me and the waters," and "the grace of the Spirit is invisibly imparted unto him who, with faith, doth draw thereof."¹³

Christ entered the water, and the world he made isn't off limits to him. The Orthodox take him at his word and bring him the house, the car, and the grapes.

Where it came from

Hapgood gives the history as the Russian books understood it: the blessing on the eve was originally for the catechumens who were about to be baptized, and the blessing on the day was added later in imitation of the Christians of Jerusalem, who went out to the Jordan on the feast to pray.¹⁴ And the habit of blessing first fruits is older than the Church; Israel brought the first of the harvest to God (Deuteronomy 26:1–11), and the Church kept bringing it.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: bring a clean bottle on Theophany and take some holy water home. Drink a little, anoint yourself with it, sprinkle your rooms with it. Bring grapes on August 6.

If you're visiting: if you're in the crowd on Theophany, you'll probably get wet; that's the idea.

Field Note: the priest at your door. If he's coming to bless your house, set out "a lighted candle, an icon and a wide bowl for the blessed water" together on a table, and let the children lead him from room to room carrying the candle.¹⁵ If you're not Orthodox and a friend invites you to theirs, go. It's short, it's mostly singing, and you'll be in someone's home on the day they've asked God into it.

Go deeper

• Hapgood, Service Book, the Great Blessing of Waters, pp. 189–197; Prayers at the Founding of a House and for Any Object, pp. 557–558; Blessing of Grapes and Fruit, pp. 262–263.
• Matthew 3:13–17; Isaiah 35 and 55, read at the Great Blessing.
• Steven Belonick, "Blessing Water, Homes, Fire Engines, and Bee Hives," OCA Wonder.
• The Church Year; Prayer at Home.

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