A GREAT HOLY THING is close to us throughout our life, and it is Holy Water (agiasma in Greek).

Sanctified water is an image of God’s grace; it cleanses the faithful of spiritual defilements, it sanctifies and it strengthens them in their struggle for salvation in God.

At the very beginning we are plunged therein in Baptism, when in the reception of this mysterion we are immersed three times in the font, which is filled with holy water. In the mysterion of Baptism, the holy water washes away the sinful impurity of a person, it renews and regenerates him into a new life in Christ.

Holy water plays an indispensable part in the consecration of churches and all those things which are used in the Divine services, and also in the blessing of homes, buildings and other things. We are sprinkled with holy water in church processions, and during molebens.

On the day of Theophany every Orthodox Christians takes home a bottle of holy water, carefully keeping it as one of the greatest of holy things, and prayerfully partaking of the holy water when he is ill or in times of infirmity.

“Holy water,” as wrote the hierarch Dimitri of Cherson, “has the power to sanctify the souls and the bodies of all who make use of it.” When taken with faith and with prayer, it is able to cure our physical ailments. After hearing the confessions of pilgrims, the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov always gave them a sip from a cup of holy Theophany water.

The Venerable Ambrose of Optina sent a bottle of holy water to one who was fatally ill, and to the amazement of the doctors his incurable sickness disappeared.

The Elder, hieroschemamonk Seraphim Vyritskii always advised that one sprinkle products and food itself with Jordan (i.e., Theophany) water, which, in his words, “sanctifies everything.” When someone was extremely ill, the Elder Seraphim blessed them to partake of a spoonful of holy water on every hour. The Elder said that there was no medicine more powerful than holy water or sanctified oil - none at all.

The order of the Blessing of Waters, which is celebrated on the feast of Theophany, is called Great on account of the special solemnity of the rite, and it commemorates the Baptism of the Lord, in which event the Church not only recognises the sacramental washing away of sins, but the actual sanctification of the nature of the waters themselves through the immersion within them of God in the flesh.

The Great Blessing of the Waters is performed twice - on the day of Theophany itself and also on the evening before, the Eve of Theophany. Some believers mistakenly assume that the waters which are blessed on these two days are different. But actually, only one rite is used in the blessing both on the Eve and on the day of the feast of the Baptism itself.

Even the hierarch John Chrysostom says that the Theophany holy water remains for many years without deteriorating; it stays fresh, pure and potable, as if at this very moment it had poured forth from a living spring. This is a miracle of the Grace of God, which each one of us can observe even now!