The Rite and Its History

The shape of the baptismal rite and how it came to be: the ancient catechumenate that formed converts over months and years, the exorcisms that freed them from the enemy, the making of a catechumen, the great blessing of the font by which the water is sanctified, and the immersion, chrismation, vesting, and first communion that once formed a single unbroken paschal initiation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Catechumenate

In the early Church baptism was the end of a long road, not its beginning. Adult converts entered the catechumenate — an order of the “hearers” who were being instructed and tested, sometimes for as long as three years, before they could approach the font (a discipline described in Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition, on the scrutiny and formation of catechumens; and in the fourth-century catechetical lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem, delivered to candidates during Lent). The catechumen was enrolled with prayer and the sign of the cross, was dismissed from the liturgical assembly before the eucharistic offering — a dismissal whose vestige survives in the litany “Catechumens, depart” still read in the Divine Liturgy — and was prepared through the Great Fast for baptism at Pascha (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, SVS Press, 1974, on the catechumenate and its paschal setting; see Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy).

This intense adult formation shaped the whole rite, and its structures remain in the service-books even after the Church, over the first millennium, came to baptize mostly the infant children of Christian families. The reception into the catechumenate — the naming, the breathing upon the face, the signing with the cross, the imposition of the hand, the prayers over the candidate — still opens the Orthodox baptismal service, now normally performed together with the baptism itself rather than months before (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, on the making of a catechumen; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, Part II). The Lenten and paschal character likewise survives: the baptismal verse “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27) is sung in place of the Trisagion on the great baptismal feasts — Pascha, Pentecost, Theophany, Lazarus Saturday and Holy Saturday — the days on which the ancient Church baptized its catechumens.

The Exorcisms

Because the candidate is passing out of the dominion of the fallen powers, the rite begins with exorcism. The priest reads a series of exorcistic prayers commanding the unclean spirit to depart and adjuring the enemy in the name of the God who “hast bound the devil” and trampled him by the cross; he breathes upon the candidate’s mouth, forehead, and breast, sealing him for God (the exorcisms of the Orthodox rite; described in principle in Cyril, Procatechesis and Mystagogical Catechesis 1, on the pre-baptismal exorcisms). The exorcisms are not a claim that every catechumen is possessed; they are the Church’s assertion of Christ’s victory over the whole realm of evil and her cleansing of the person of every hold the enemy has upon him, so that he may freely renounce Satan and turn to Christ (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, on the exorcisms as the recovery of freedom). Only after this cleansing does the candidate himself renounce the devil and confess adherence to Christ, reciting the Creed (see The Theology of Baptism, on the renunciation).

The Blessing of the Font

The heart of the rite’s preparation is the great blessing of the water. The priest, vested in white, censes the font and prays one of the most theologically dense prayers in the Orthodox books — a long thanksgiving recalling the whole work of creation and redemption and asking the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the water, that it may become “the water of redemption, the water of sanctification, the purification of flesh and spirit… a fountain springing up unto eternal life.” He breathes upon the water in the form of a cross, signs it thrice, and, in many uses, pours the sanctified oil of gladness into it (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, 1974, gives a full commentary on the blessing of the font). The blessing of the water is a true epiclesis, structurally like the eucharistic invocation: the water is not holy of itself and is not made holy by the priest’s power, but by the Holy Spirit whom the Church asks the Father to send upon it (see Sacramental Theology, on the epiclesis in every mystery). In this the baptismal water is joined to the whole biblical theology of water — the Spirit over the deep at creation, the flood, the Red Sea, the Jordan of Christ’s own baptism — so that the sanctified font becomes the place where the person dies and is reborn (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, on the cosmic and biblical dimensions of the blessing).

From Immersion to the Table

In its classical form the rite moves in a single unbroken sequence, and this sequence is the key to the Orthodox understanding of Christian initiation as one integrated whole. After the blessing of the font the candidate is anointed with the oil of gladness on brow, breast, back, ears, hands, and feet — an oil of healing and of the athlete preparing for the contest — and is then baptized by triple immersion “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (the immersion formula of the Orthodox rite; Matthew 28:19). Rising from the water, the newly-baptized is at once chrismated — sealed with the holy myron for the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Chrismation) — clothed in the white baptismal garment while “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” is sung, given a lighted candle, and led in procession around the font. The hair of the head is cut in the tonsure, a first offering of the whole self to God. In the ancient order the newly-illumined then received the Eucharist, the completion of initiation — and in the Orthodox East this integrity was never broken: baptism, chrismation, and communion remain a single initiation given even to infants, who are communed from their baptism onward (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, on the unity of initiation; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, on infant chrismation and communion in the East). The Western severance of confirmation and first communion from baptism, which reserved them to later years and to the bishop, is a divergence treated in the chrismation section (see Chrismation and Reception into the Church).

Development and Disputed Points

The history of the rite is thus one of remarkable continuity with growth at the edges. The core — renunciation, blessing of water, immersion in the threefold name — is attested from the earliest sources (the Didache 7 already gives the form; Justin Martyr, First Apology 61, describes the washing of regeneration in the mid-second century). The elaboration of the prayers, the exorcisms, and the blessing of the font took shape in the fourth and fifth centuries, the age of the great catechetical bishops — Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Theodore of Mopsuestia — whose mystagogical instructions are our fullest windows onto the rite (the mystagogies of Cyril, NPNF II/7, and of the others; discussed in Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit).

One genuine question of authorship touches this section’s principal source. [Disputed: the authorship of the five *Mystagogical Catecheses* traditionally ascribed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The manuscripts variously attribute them to Cyril or to his successor John of Jerusalem, and some appear headed "of Cyril and of John." Many scholars hold that Cyril delivered them and John edited or redelivered them, or that they belong to John; others defend Cyril's authorship. The dispute bears on precise dating within the later fourth century but not on the value of the text as a first-hand witness to the Jerusalem rite of initiation, which is undisputed (see F. L. Cross, ed., *St Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments*, SPCK, 1951, introduction, on the authorship question).] The mode of baptism was likewise long settled in the East as full triple immersion, with pouring allowed only in necessity — a point on which the Orthodox rite has remained more conservative than the medieval and modern West, and one the modern Orthodox liturgical movement has pressed to recover fully wherever infant baptism had drifted toward mere sprinkling (Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit, on immersion as the norm; see Orthodoxy: Baptism and Chrismation).

See Also

• The Theology of Baptism — the meaning the rite carries: death and resurrection with Christ
• Chrismation and Reception into the Church — the sealing that completes initiation and the East–West divergence from confirmation
• Communion and the Life of the Church — the Eucharist as the completion of initiation, given even to infants
• Orthodoxy: Baptism and Chrismation — the hub essay this file expands
• Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy — the assembly from which catechumens were once dismissed

References

• Cyril of Jerusalem. Procatechesis and Mystagogical Catecheses 1–2. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7; F. L. Cross, ed., St Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Christian Sacraments. London: SPCK, 1951 (with the discussion of authorship).
• Schmemann, Alexander. Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.
• Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993.
• Hippolytus (attrib.). The Apostolic Tradition — on the catechumenate and scrutinies.
• Justin Martyr. First Apology 61. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
• Didache 7. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7.
• Scripture: Matthew 28:19; Galatians 3:27.