The minute after the water
Ask a visitor what happens at an Orthodox baptism and you will hear about the water: the three immersions, the white garment, the small cross hung round the neck. What follows a minute later is described far less often, and it is the subject of this article. While the newly baptised is still wet, the priest opens a small vessel, touches it, and anoints the forehead, the eyes, the nostrils, the mouth, the ears, the breast, the hands and the feet, saying each time the same short sentence: “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
That anointing is chrismation. In the Orthodox Church it is a sacrament in its own right, and it corresponds to what many Western Christians know as confirmation. Historically the two are the same act. What separated them was not a quarrel about doctrine so much as a practical problem about bishops, which the two halves of Christendom solved in different ways. The difference is real, and this article will not pretend otherwise; but it is worth understanding before it is argued about.
Why it follows baptism without a pause
Baptism, in Orthodox understanding, is a death and a rising: the old life is buried in the water and a new one comes up out of it. Chrismation is what the Church does next, and it is understood as the personal Pentecost of this particular Christian — the Holy Spirit given not to the Church in general but to this named person, sealed on this body, at this font. Because the two belong together as burial and breath belong together, Orthodoxy has never wanted a gap between them.
Infants receive the anointing for the same reason. A baby baptised in an Orthodox church is chrismated in the same service and then brought to receive Holy Communion, usually at the next Divine Liturgy. The Church does not treat the Holy Spirit as waiting until the child can account for Him. Nor does it treat the child as a probationary member who will be admitted properly later. Whatever else may be said for or against that practice, it is at least consistent: the whole of Christian initiation is given at once, to the whole person, before anyone has earned it.
There is, in consequence, no later rite. An Orthodox teenager is not confirmed at fourteen. He has been sealed since infancy, and what waits for him is not a second sacrament but confession, communion and the ordinary work of a Christian life.
What actually happens at the service
For a parish reader, the shape is worth knowing in advance. After the immersions and the clothing in the white garment, the priest reads a prayer asking God to grant the newly baptised the seal of the Holy Spirit, and then makes the anointings described above. The candidate, godparents and priest then walk three times round the font carrying candles while the choir sings the words of Galatians 3:27 — “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” — in place of the usual hymn before the epistle.
Saint Paul’s passage on baptism as burial and rising is read (Romans 6:3–11), followed by the Gospel. Afterwards come two small rites that surprise people who have not seen them: the washing away of the chrism with a sponge, and the tonsure, in which a few hairs are cut in the form of a cross as a first free offering from someone who has nothing else to give. In many parishes these follow immediately; in others they are kept for a later day.
The whole thing takes perhaps an hour, and nothing in it is repeated afterwards. An adult convert received by chrismation will recognise most of the second half of this service, used without the font: the confession of faith, the prayer, the anointings, the epistle and the Gospel. Families usually take the baptismal candle home and light it on the anniversary. It is worth saying, for anyone imagining something austere, that Orthodox baptisms are crowded and cheerful, and that nobody minds a crying infant.
The chrism itself, and how it is consecrated
Holy chrism is not ordinary oil. It is olive oil compounded with wine and a long list of aromatic substances, and in the Russian Church it is prepared during Holy Week: the cooking begins on Great Monday and continues through Tuesday and Wednesday, with the Gospel read continuously over the vessels while they are stirred. On Great Thursday the Patriarch consecrates it during the Liturgy, and it is then distributed to the dioceses of the Moscow Patriarchate, from which it reaches parishes as far away as Singapore.
This matters more than it may appear. The priest who anoints a convert in Kovan did not make the chrism in his hand; it came to him from his bishop, and to his bishop from the Patriarch. The bishop is therefore present in the act even when he is not in the room. For the same reason, the right to consecrate chrism has long been treated among the Orthodox Churches as one of the marks of a self-governing, autocephalous Church — which is why the annual consecration is reported as news.
Sealing and anointing in the Scriptures
The language is apostolic before it is liturgical. Writing to Corinth, Saint Paul says that God “hath anointed us”, and adds: “Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1:21–22, KJV). Saint John writes to his readers, “But ye have an unction from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20, KJV), and returns to “the anointing which ye have received of him” a few verses later. Anointing, sealing and the gift of the Spirit form one cluster of ideas in the apostolic writings, not three separate ones.
Acts records the act as well as the words. When Samaria received the word of God, those who had been baptised had not yet received the Holy Spirit; Peter and John came down, prayed, “Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:17, KJV). Something followed baptism, and it was given by the apostles.
Honesty requires a distinction here. That the apostles laid hands on the newly baptised is in the text. That they used consecrated oil is not; the anointing with chrism is how the Church, as it outgrew the reach of any one man’s hands, continued to do what the apostles did. Orthodoxy holds that the continuity is real, and does not claim that the ritual detail is written in Acts.
Why East and West came to differ
In both halves of the ancient Church the bishop was the normal minister of this sealing. The difficulty arrived with success. Once there were more congregations than a bishop could visit, something had to give: either the bishop’s hand or the unity of the rite.
Eastern practice kept the rite together and let the presbyter perform the anointing, using chrism the bishop had consecrated. Western practice kept the minister and let the second half wait for the bishop’s visit. In time the waiting hardened into a principle, and confirmation came to be associated with an age at which a Christian could answer for the faith himself. Roman canon law today keeps both threads: the bishop is the ordinary minister, and confirmation is to be conferred “at about the age of discretion unless the conference of bishops has determined another age” (Code of Canon Law, cc. 882, 891).
Two things are worth adding, because they narrow the gap without closing it. An adult baptised in the Roman rite is normally confirmed in the same service, as the ancient pattern requires; and the Eastern Catholic churches chrismate infants exactly as the Orthodox do. Many Protestant communities also keep a rite called confirmation, though it is generally understood differently again — as the moment a Christian raised in the faith professes it publicly as his own, which is a serious and valuable thing and a different question from the one addressed here.
Where Orthodoxy differs, it differs plainly: it has never treated the anointing as the moment a person makes up his mind, but as the moment the gift is given. That is why it can be given to a child who has made up his mind about nothing at all.
How converts are usually received
Most adults who come to Orthodoxy from another Christian confession are not baptised again. If a person was baptised with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the Orthodox Church ordinarily receives him by chrismation, after a period as a catechumen, with confession of the Orthodox faith and a first confession of sins.
The practice is ancient. Canon 95 of the Council in Trullo (692), whose canons the Orthodox Church receives together with the Sixth Ecumenical Council, sets out how various groups are to be received. Some are received after presenting certificates and renouncing their errors, and then, in the canon’s own words, “we anoint them with the holy chrism on their foreheads, eyes, nostrils, mouth and ears; and as we seal them we say — The seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Others the same canon directs to be received by baptism. The Church has judged case by case from the beginning.
It should be said candidly that there is no single rule applied identically in every Orthodox jurisdiction. Reception is the diocesan bishop’s decision, taken through the parish priest, and a decision to baptise rather than chrismate is a judgment about what is certain, not a verdict on anyone’s previous Christian life. If you are considering this step, the answer to almost every question you have is the same: ask the priest, early, and let him take it to the bishop.
Catechumens often arrive anxious about how much they will have to renounce, or about how much they must know before they are allowed in. The preparation is not an examination, and it is not primarily about acquiring information. Writing in 1979 to someone preparing for reception, Fr. Seraphim Rose put its purpose in a single sentence, and it is still the best summary available.
You are coming to Orthodoxy to receive Christ, and this you should never forget.
Fr. Seraphim Rose, letter of 3 May 1979, quoted in Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, ch. 84 (St. Herman Press, 2003)
What the seal is, and what it is not
Chrismation is not a graduation, not a reward and not a certificate of achievement. The seal is placed on people who have done nothing to deserve it — which is exactly why an infant a few weeks old can receive it. Nor is it a charm. Orthodox writers have warned for centuries against treating holy things as though they worked mechanically on someone who is not looking in their direction.
Understood properly, it is a beginning rather than an end. The Spirit is given whole; the learning to live in Him takes the rest of a life, and is done in the ordinary way, through prayer, the Liturgy, confession, and the unremarkable duties of charity. Most of that work looks like nothing at all from the outside.
If you have read this far from another Christian tradition, nothing in it is an accusation. Fr. Seraphim Rose — an American convert whose own mother was a Protestant and whose father had become one — put the matter in a way this parish is glad to borrow, crediting the formulation to Fr. Dimitry Dudko.
We should view the non-Orthodox as people to whom Orthodoxy has not yet been revealed, as people who are potentially Orthodox
Fr. Seraphim Rose, letter of 27 November 1980, quoted in Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, ch. 84 (St. Herman Press, 2003)
If you want to see it
Baptisms and receptions at the Parish of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Kovan are not private ceremonies. Anyone may stand and watch, and most people find that an hour of watching answers more questions than an evening of reading. If you are enquiring seriously, speak to one of the parish clergy; there is no obligation attached to asking, and no timetable you are expected to keep.
The door that chrismation opens is not a door into a club. It is the door into a life of repentance, which is slower and plainer than most converts expect, and into communion, which is the point of the whole thing.