Baptism for Russian Orthodox Christians

The kids, Tioma and Sasha got baptized on Saturday and I was invited to join the family at the church to watch the ceremony. What an honor! So for the first time, I actually stood through a normal Russian Orthodox Christian church prayer ceremony and later their baptism ceremony. Some of the rituals reminded me of those performed in “Taoist-Buddhist “places that I went to in the past. The big brush used to splash some holy water at the followers, the candles, the chanting and the strong scent in the church.


While the priest chanted, the rest of the people stood, with candles in their hands watching and chanting along. The whole procedure may be an hour, but everyone continued standing, because there are no seats in the church. Majority of the people attending the ceremony were grandmothers. I was exhausted after standing for half an hour and was amazed how these grandmothers were able to stand for such a long time. Bless those legs!

The priest and his helpers then carried this big icon and cross and walk one round outside the church chanting/singing. They pause for awhile right outside the door as the priest walked in flicking everyone with holy water with a big brush/whip. And at the end of the ceremony, everyone was given a big piece of bread.

My teacher emphasized the day before that religion only sprang up after the Soviet Union collapsed.17 years later; the Russians seem to have become extremely religious. I remember being in Saint Petersburg a month ago and seeing a long queue into one of the churches at 715am in the morning. At 930am, the queue was still that long and more than half of the people were grandmothers.

I feel sad whenever I think of the Russian grandmothers, for many of them lost their men to wars and to alcohol. Perhaps having a religion is good for people who really need the support.

Baptism Ceremony
Now this is really interesting because I have never witnessed a baptism ceremony. 15 minutes after the normal prayers have ended, the baptism ceremony begins. It was witnessed by close friends and family members.

The group of people who wanted to get baptized stood in a semi circle behind the priest while the priest chanted. He dipped a brush into some bottle of holy water and “painted” a dot on certain parts of the face, palms and knees. This was done 3-4 times during the baptism ceremony. The Christians-to-be then walked into a room for a short while as the priest continued chanting. Finally, each of them had a bucket of water poured onto their heads and they are given a necklace with a cross on it. The whole process took about 20-40 minutes