Holy water and domestic health

From the blog Lessons from the Monastery:

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The sisters always stress how important it is to have our home blessed regularly with agiasmos (holy water). I remember when we first moved here I was speaking with the Abbess of a nearby monastery about the trouble we were having with our neighbours and to my surprise she asked, “Have you had your house blessed?” And I said we hadn’t. She told me to get it done as soon as possible, especially since the owner’s son had left furniture behind in our apartment when he moved out.

When it comes to anything second-hand Greeks always suggest sprinkling a little agiasmos on it. “You never know who previously owned this or that thing, or what they did while wearing it,” etc., my Nona (godmother) would always tell us.

We save some of holy water from the feast of the Theophany and keep it year round in order to use it. The agiasmos which we receive on the feast of the Theophany can only be drunk after fasting (ie. this Friday morning we can drink it because we’ll fast on Thursday), and before eating antidoron. However, the holy water that is blessed on the first day of every month, for example, can be drunk when we wake up in the morning (ie. after fasting six hours while we sleep).

Something else about agiasmos that I found helpful to learn is that it’s a good idea to sprinkle some in one’s home after a couple has gotten into an argument, or if one feels particularly tempted in the home. The Church offers us so many blessings and so many ways to sanctify our life, we should take advantage of it as much as we can.

The photo on the right is a Romanian custom. The priest melts some of the beeswax from the candles used in the service and puts a cross with the initials IC XC NI KA in each room of the home after the agiasmos service. So as not to tick our landlord off too much, we only had our friend do it in our living room.

To read more about these services of blessing the water, and when and how we partake of agiasmos see here.