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See also:HOLY See also:WATER , technically the water with which See also:Christian believers sign the See also:cross on their foreheads on entering or leaving See also:- CHURCH
- CHURCH (according to most authorities derived from the Gr. Kvpcaxov [&wµa], " the Lord's [house]," and common to many Teutonic, Slavonic and other languages under various forms—Scottish kirk, Ger. Kirche, Swed. kirka, Dan. kirke, Russ. tserkov, Buig. cerk
- CHURCH, FREDERICK EDWIN (1826-1900)
- CHURCH, GEORGE EARL (1835–1910)
- CHURCH, RICHARD WILLIAM (1815–189o)
- CHURCH, SIR RICHARD (1784–1873)
church. The See also:edict of See also:Gratian See also:lays down that it should be exorcized and blessed by the See also:priest and sprinkled with exorcized See also:salt. This rite is found in the Gelasian, Gregorian and other sacramentaries. In the See also:East the water was blessed once a See also:month, in the Latin Church it is now blessed every See also:Sunday. In the 4th See also:century in the East it was usual to See also:wash the hands on entering the church (see See also:ABLUTION).
In the See also:early church water was not expressly consecrated for baptisms and other lustrations. " Water," says See also:Tertullian in his See also:tract on See also:baptism, " was the See also:abode at the first of the divine Spirit, being more acceptable then (to See also:God) than the other elements." He pictures the See also:world in the beginning: " See also:total darkness, formless as yet, without tending of stars, the See also:melancholy See also:abyss, the See also:earth unprepared, the See also:heaven undevelopt. The liquid alone an ever perfect material, smiling, See also:simple, pure in its own right, as a worthy vehicle underlay the God." Water was similarly pure in itself in the old See also:Persian See also:religion.
The Canons of See also:Hippolytus, or See also:Egyptian church See also:- ORDER
- ORDER (through Fr. ordre, for earlier ordene, from Lat. ordo, ordinis, rank, service, arrangement; the ultimate source is generally taken to be the root seen in Lat. oriri, rise, arise, begin; cf. " origin ")
- ORDER, HOLY
order, of about A.D. 250, give no See also:prayer for See also:consecration of fonts, but enact that " at See also:cock See also:crow the baptismal party shall take their stand near waving water, pure, prepared, sacred, of the See also:sea." The Teaching of the Apostles, c. See also:loo, merely insists on " living," that is, clear and See also:running water. The See also:ancient feeling, especially Jewish, was that in lustrations the same water must not pass twice over the See also:body. A stagnant See also:pool was useless. Bubbling See also:waters too seemed to have a spirit in them.
Either because running water was not always at See also:hand, or as See also:part of the growing tendency of the church to multiply ceremonies, rituals arose See also:late in the 3rd century for consecrating water. The sacramentary of See also:Serapion, c. 350, provides a prayer asking that the divine Word may descend into the water and hallow it, as of old it hallowed the See also:Jordan. In the See also:Roman order of baptism the priest prays that " the See also:font may receive the See also:- GRACE (Fr. grace, Lat. gratia, from grates, beloved, pleasing; formed from the root cra-, Gr. xav-, cf. xaipw, x6p,ua, Xapts)
- GRACE, WILLIAM GILBERT (1848– )
grace of the only begotten Son from the holy Spirit, and that the latter may impregnate with hidden admixture of His See also:light this water prepared for the regeneration of mankind, to the end that See also:man through a sanctification conceived from the immaculate womb of the divine font, may emerge a heavenly offspring reborn as a new creature." The water is then exorcized and evil See also:spirits warned off, and lastly blessed. During the prayer the priest Twice signs the water with the cross, and once blows upon it.
The first mention of a See also:special consecration of water for other ends than baptism is in the Acts of See also:- THOMAS
- THOMAS (c. 1654-1720)
- THOMAS (d. 110o)
- THOMAS, ARTHUR GORING (1850-1892)
- THOMAS, CHARLES LOUIS AMBROISE (1811-1896)
- THOMAS, GEORGE (c. 1756-1802)
- THOMAS, GEORGE HENRY (1816-187o)
- THOMAS, ISAIAH (1749-1831)
- THOMAS, PIERRE (1634-1698)
- THOMAS, SIDNEY GILCHRIST (1850-1885)
- THOMAS, ST
- THOMAS, THEODORE (1835-1905)
- THOMAS, WILLIAM (d. 1554)
Thomas (? A.D. 200); it is for the purgation of a youth already baptized who had killed his See also:mistress because she would not live chastely with him. The apostle prays: " See also:Fountain sent unto us from See also:Rest, See also:Power of Salvation from that Power proceeding which overcomes and subjects all to its own will, come and dwell within these waters, that the Charisma (See also:gift) of the holy Spirit may be fully perfected through them." The youth then washes his hands, which on touching the See also:sacrament had withered up, and is healed.
The church shared the universal belief that holiness or the holySpirit is quasi-material and capable of being held in suspense in water, just as See also:sin is a See also:half material infection, absorbed and carried away by it. So Tertullian writes: " The water which carried the Spirit of God (probably regarded as a See also:shadow or reflection-soul) borrowed holiness from that which was carried upon it; for every underlying See also:matter must needs absorb and take up the quality of that matter which overhangs it; especially does a corporeal so absorb a spiritual, as this can easily penetrate and See also:settle into it owing to the subtlety of its substance."
" Water, " he continues, " was generically hallowed by the Spirit of God brooding over it at creation, and therefore all special waters are holy, and at once obtain the sacrament of sanctification when God is invoked (over them.) For.the Spirit from heaven instantly supervenes and is upon the waters, hallowing them out of itself, and being so hallowed they drink up a power of hallowing."
What is done in material semblance, he then argues, is repeated in the unseen See also:medium of the Spirit. The stains of See also:idolatry, See also:vice and See also:fraud are not visible on the flesh, yet they resemble real dirt. " 'The waters are medicated in a manner through the intervention of the See also:angel, and the Spirit is corporeally washed in the water and the flesh is spiritually purified in the same."
Tertullian believed that an angel was sent down, when God was invoked, like that which stirred the pool of See also:Bethesda. As regards See also:rival Isiac and Mithraic baptisms, he asserts that their waters are destitute of divine power; See also:nay, are rather tenanted by the See also:devil who in this matter sets himself to rival God. " With-out any religious rite at all," he urges, " unclean spirits brood upon waters, aspiring to repeat that primordial gestation of the divine Spirit." And he instances the " darkling springs and lonely See also:rivers which are said to snatch, to wit by force of a harmful spirit." In the sequel he defines the role of the angel of baptism who does not infuse himself in waters, already holy from the first; but merely presides over the washing of the faithful, and ensures their being made pure for the reception of the holy Spirit in the rite of See also:confirmation which immediately follows. " The devil who till now ruled over us, we leave behind overwhelmed in the water."
From all this we conclude that what is See also:poetry to us—akin to the folk-See also:lore of water-sprites, naiads, kelpies, See also:river-gods and water-See also:worship in See also:general—was to Tertullian and to the generations of believers who fashioned the baptismal See also:rites, ablutions and beliefs of the church, nothing less than grim reality and unquestionable fact.
See See also:John, See also:marquess of See also:Bute. and E. A. See also:Wallis Budge, The Blessing of the Waters (See also:London, 1901); E. B. See also:Tylor, See also:Primitive Culture (London, 1903). (F. C.
End of Article: HOLY WATER
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