Blessing of Holy Water

Liturgy · September 6, 2026

Saints Peter & Paul Orthodox Cathedral, 109 Grand Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302

Water is the first element the Church blesses and the one we can least live without. We bless it in the great service at Theophany, when Christ went down into the Jordan, and again in the shorter service through the year, like this one at the end of the Liturgy. The prayers ask God to send the Holy Spirit upon the water so that it becomes what it was made to be: a gift of life, a cleansing, and a place where He meets us.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote that water carries both of its meanings from Scripture at once. It is the flood and the deep, the power that destroys, and it is the spring that gives life to everything. When the priest blesses it, the Church announces that creation belongs to God and has been restored in Christ. The blessing returns water to its first meaning, and in doing so it shows the whole world as God’s gift.

That is why holy water goes home with us. It is sprinkled through the house, taken with prayer in the morning, and kept in the icon corner through the year. For Schmemann the blessing reveals the world as the place where God is present, and holy water is a share of that revelation carried back into ordinary life.