The Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Chrismation is the believer’s personal Pentecost: sealed with the holy myron on brow, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands, and feet with the words “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit,” the newly-baptized receives the indwelling of the Spirit who came upon the apostles at Pentecost. This file treats the theology of the seal and the holy chrism (myron) — its composition, its ancient consecration by the bishops, and its meaning as the tangible bond of the whole Church.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Personal Pentecost

If baptism is birth, chrismation is the coming of the Spirit upon the one newly born. The two mysteries are distinct but inseparable: baptism unites the believer to the death and resurrection of Christ; chrismation gives him the personal gift of the Holy Spirit, so that what happened to the whole Church at Pentecost happens now to this person. St. Cyril of Jerusalem makes the parallel exact: as Christ, after His baptism in the Jordan, received the Holy Spirit who descended upon Him, “in like manner to you also, after you had come up from the pool of the sacred waters, was given the chrism, the figure of that wherewith Christ was anointed; and this is the Holy Spirit” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 3.1, trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7). The very name “Christ” means “the anointed one,” and “Christian” means one who shares His anointing; chrismation is the mystery by which the baptized is made a christ, an anointed one, a bearer of the Spirit (Cyril, Mystagogical Catechesis 3.1–5).

The Scriptural roots of the seal are apostolic. Paul writes that God “hath anointed us… who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1:21–22), and that in Christ the Ephesians “were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13; cf. 4:30). In the Acts of the Apostles the gift of the Spirit is repeatedly given by the apostles’ hand-laying upon the newly-baptized (Acts 8:14–17, at Samaria; Acts 19:5–6, at Ephesus). The Orthodox tradition understands chrismation as the successor and equivalent of that apostolic hand-laying: what the apostles did by imposing hands the Church now does by anointing with the myron consecrated by the successors of the apostles, so that the priest who chrismates conveys a gift that remains episcopal and apostolic in its source (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, Part II; see chrismation-and-reception-into-the-church.md, on the bishop and the myron).

Nicholas Cabasilas gives the mystery its place in the organic life of grace. Baptism confers being and existence in Christ; chrismation confers energy and activity — it sets the newborn powers in motion, distributing the particular gifts of the Spirit according to each person’s need and calling, “the gifts of the Spirit… which the anointing bestows” (Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, Book 3, on chrismation as the giving of the energies of the Spirit). The seal is thus not a mere confirmation of something already complete but the animating gift by which the baptized is enabled to live the life of Christ — to pray, to love, to discern, to grow toward the measure of the full stature of Christ.

The Anointing of the Members

The rite makes the gift bodily and total. Immediately after the immersion the priest anoints the newly-baptized with the holy myron, tracing the sign of the cross upon the principal parts and senses of the body — the forehead, the eyes, the nostrils, the mouth, the ears, the breast, the hands, and the feet — saying at each, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen” (the chrismation formula of the Orthodox rite; see Orthodoxy: Baptism and Chrismation). Cyril explains the anointing of the several senses: the forehead, that the shame of Adam may be taken away and the face behold the glory of God with open face; the ears, to hear the divine mysteries; the nostrils, to be a sweet savor of Christ; the breast, to stand against the assaults of the adversary “having on the breastplate of righteousness” (Cyril, Mystagogical Catechesis 3.4, on the anointing of forehead, ears, nostrils, and breast). The whole person — every faculty of body and soul — is thus consecrated and made a temple of the Holy Spirit, so that the Christian’s entire life, sensory and spiritual, is claimed for God.

The Holy Myron

The matter of the mystery is the holy myron (Church Slavonic miro; the Chrism), a fragrant oil compounded of olive oil, balsam, and a large number of aromatic spices and essences — in the received recipes some dozens of ingredients, boiled and blended with prayer during Holy Week. Its richness of composition is itself a sign: the manifold spices figure the manifold gifts of the one Spirit (Cyril already reads the chrism as no ordinary ointment but the gift of Christ and the Holy Spirit, “made fit… by the invocation of the Holy Spirit,” Mystagogical Catechesis 3.3). The myron is not consecrated at each baptism; it is consecrated in great quantity at rare intervals and distributed to all the churches, so that every chrismation everywhere is performed with the one common chrism.

The consecration of the myron is reserved, in Orthodox practice, to the highest authority in each autocephalous Church — the patriarch or head of the Church with his synod of bishops — and is performed with great solemnity in Holy Week, in most traditions on Holy Thursday, the day of the institution of the Eucharist and of the priesthood (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, on the consecration of the chrism by the heads of the autocephalous Churches; Dionysius already treats the consecration of the myron as one of the perfecting rites of the hierarchy, reserved to the bishop, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 4, trans. Luibheid, Paulist Press, 1987). This reservation carries a deep ecclesiology. Because the priest who chrismates uses myron he did not himself consecrate but received from his bishop, and the bishop from the primate, the humblest chrismation in a village church is bound, through the chrism, to the whole episcopate and to the unity of the Church. The myron is a tangible bond of communion: to be sealed with it is to be sealed into the one Body, and the newer autocephalous Churches’ reception or consecration of their own chrism has at times been a marker and even a matter of dispute in questions of ecclesiastical independence (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II). The bishop remains, in the myron, the minister of the Spirit’s seal even when he is not bodily present — which is precisely the difference the Orthodox rite preserves against the Western severance of confirmation from baptism (see chrismation-and-reception-into-the-church.md).

The Indwelling and the Growth

The theology of the seal reaches beyond the moment of the rite. The gift given in chrismation is the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, the “earnest” (arrabōn) or down-payment of the inheritance to come (Ephesians 1:14), which the Christian is then called to “stir up” and to keep unquenched (2 Timothy 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:19). St. Seraphim of Sarov’s teaching that the whole aim of the Christian life is “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit” is, in this light, the unfolding of chrismation: the Spirit given once in the seal is to be received ever more fully through prayer, the mysteries, and the keeping of the commandments (see Orthodoxy: Theosis, on the Spirit and deification). Chrismation is not, therefore, a completed transaction but the beginning of a life in the Spirit — the personal Pentecost from which the whole Christian journey toward deification proceeds (Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, Book 3; see The Mysteries and Theosis).

References

Cyril of Jerusalem. Mystagogical Catechesis 3. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7; F. L. Cross, ed., St Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Christian Sacraments. London: SPCK, 1951.
Cabasilas, Nicholas. The Life in Christ, Book 3. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.
Dionysius the Areopagite. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 4 (the consecration of the myron). Trans. Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.
Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; Ephesians 1:13–14, 4:30; Acts 8:14–17, 19:5–6; 2 Timothy 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:19.