Monday, February 12, 2024

Baptismal Regeneration in The Sacramentary of Serapion (c. A.D. 350)

  

PRAYER OVER THE CHRISM WITH WHICH THE BAPTIZED ARE ANOINTED

 

God of powers, aid of every soul that turns to You and comes under Your powerful hand in our Only-begotten, we beseech You, that through Your divine and invisible power of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, You may effect in this chrism a divine and heavenly operation, so that those baptized and anointed in the teaching with it of the sign of the saving cross of the Only-begotten, through which cross Satan and every adverse power is turned aside and conquered, as if reborn and renewed through the bath of regeneration, may be made participants in the gift of the Holy Spirit, and confirmed by this seal, may remain firm and immovable, unharmed and inviolate. . . . (The Sacramentary of Serapion 25.1-2, c. A.D. 350, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vols. [trans. William A. Jurgens; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1979], 2:133)