Holy Water

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

Holy water is ordinary water that a priest has blessed, set apart for use in blessings. Its most common use is the font by the door: on entering a Catholic church, people dip two fingers and make the sign of the cross, a small remembrance of baptism. Priests also use it to bless people (the Asperges, sprinkling the congregation at Easter and on some Sundays), homes, cars, rosaries, and graves. Orthodox bless water at Epiphany in a great annual rite and keep it at home to drink and sprinkle.

Incense is aromatic resin burned on charcoal in a censer (thurible) swung on chains. At solemn liturgies the deacon or priest censes the altar, the Gospel book, the bread and wine, the clergy, and finally the people — a sign of honor and of prayer rising to God. Orthodox use it at nearly every service; Catholics at solemn Masses and funerals; high-church Anglicans regularly.

Why people say it

Both are worship with the body and the senses: water you touch, smoke you smell. Christians in these traditions believe God works through physical things — He made them, He became one — and that blessing water or burning incense isn't magic but sanctified matter used for prayer. The Psalms compare prayer to incense; Revelation pictures the prayers of the saints rising as incense before God's throne. The water recalls baptism, the cleansing that began the Christian life.

How to respond

If you enter a Catholic church and see the font, you may dip your fingers and cross yourself, or walk past; both are fine for a visitor. If a priest sprinkles the congregation, you'll get a few drops and may cross yourself. If incense is used, breathe; if it bothers you, sit toward the back. If a Catholic offers to bless your home with holy water, it's a gift of care — accept if you like. If you hear "smells and bells," someone's describing a very traditional liturgy, usually fondly.

If you hear it in different churches

Catholics: holy water at every door, incense at solemn Masses and funerals. Orthodox: incense at every service, holy water blessed at Epiphany and used constantly. Anglicans: both in high-church parishes, neither in low-church ones. Lutherans: rarely. Reformed, Baptist, evangelical, and Pentecostal: neither — the Reformation's Reformed wing rejected both as unbiblical ceremony, and most Protestants have never used them. Some Protestants find incense strange; others visit an Orthodox church and never want to worship without it again.

Where does “Holy Water” come from?

The Old Testament uses water for ritual cleansing (Numbers 19) and prescribes incense for the tabernacle (Exodus 30); Psalm 141 makes the comparison to prayer, and Revelation 8 pictures it in heaven. Christian holy water is attested by the 300s, and the font at the church door by the medieval period; the Asperges rite dates to the 800s. Incense entered Christian worship in the 300s–400s (early Christians avoided it because of its pagan associations), and the swinging thurible is medieval. The Reformers of the Reformed tradition abolished both; Anglicans revived them in the Oxford Movement of the 1800s, giving rise to "smells and bells."

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