Chrismation (From OCA's Web Site)
"In the sacrament of Chrismation
we receive "the seal of the gift of the
Holy Spirit" (See Rom 8, 1 Cor 6, 2 Cor
1:21-22). If baptism is our personal
participation in Easter -- the death and
resurrection of Christ, then chrismation
is our personal participation in
Pentecost -- the coming of the Holy
Spirit upon us.
The sacrament of chrismation, also
called confirmation, is always
done in the Orthodox Church together
with baptism. Just as Easter has no
meaning for the world without Pentecost,
so baptism has no meaning for the
Christian without chrismation. In this
understanding and practice, the Orthodox
Church differs from the Roman Catholic
and Protestant churches where the two
sacraments are often separated and given
other interpretations than those found
in traditional Orthodoxy.
Chrismation, the gift of the Holy
Spirit, is performed in the Orthodox
Church by anointing all parts of the
person's body with the special oil
called holy chrism. This oil,
also called myrrh [miron] is
prepared by the bishops of the Church on
Holy Thursday. It is used in chrismation
to show that the gift of the Spirit was
originally given to men through the
apostles of Christ, whose formal
successors in the world are the bishops
of the Church (see Acts 8:14; 19:1-7).
In chrismation a person is given the
"power from on high" (Acts 1-2), the
gift of the Spirit of God, in order to
live the new life received in baptism.
He is anointed, just as Christ the
Messiah is the Anointed One of God. He
becomes-as the fathers of the Church
dared to put it -- a "christ" together
with Jesus. Thus, through chrismation we
become a "christ," a son of God, a
person upon whom the Holy Spirit dwells,
a person in whom the Holy Spirit lives
and acts -- as long as we want him and
cooperate with his powerful and holy
inspiration. Thus, it is only after our
chrismation that the baptismal
procession is made and that we hear the
epistle and the gospel of our salvation
and illumination in Christ.
After the baptism and chrismation the
person newly-received into God's family
is tonsured. The tonsure, which
is the cutting of hair from the head in
the sign of the cross, is the sign that
the person completely offers himself to
God -- hair being the symbol of strength
(Jud 16:17). Thus, until the fifteenth
century the clergy of the Orthodox
Church -- the "professional Christians,"
so to speak -- wore the tonsure all
their lives to show that their strength
was in God. "
