Baptism

The holy sacrament that cannot be described, only experienced.

I have found this article quite challenging to write. So much happened in such a short amount of time, and it was packed full of emotions. I’m going to do my best, but trying to describe it, even to those baptised LDS or protestant, is ultimately impossible.

There has never been a time in my life when I enjoyed going to church. It has always been an obligation and a chore. Most of the time it just felt like another job, and I was already burned out in the one I had. In the Orthodox church, I feel inspired, uplifted, and excited to attend. I’ve never felt that way before, so I pushed to get baptised.

Despite that, when the day of my baptism finally arrived I was still on the up and down anxiety rollercoaster, struggling with doubt and hesitation. As I started getting my things together to go to the church for my baptism, I experienced an emotion I wasn’t expecting. I felt sad.

When I paused to introspecct I was surprised to realize that I was mourning closing the door on my old faith. Part of it was all knowing that I could never again participate in LDS rituals with my family, who are all firmly LDS. The other part I believe was that I had put in so many years of my life - decades - of service to the LDS church, a full time mission, paying 10% of my income in tithing, raising my children as faithful members, sending them to BYU, and all of the constant searching for answers to try to prove to myself that the LDS church is true.

It was in that complex web of emotions¹ that I briefly considered not going through with it. Again, I had to ask myself, would I really be able to go back to the LDS church and spend the rest of my life struggling with it? Honestly, I had to answer no. So I got my stuff, got in my truck and drove to the church.

Entering into the Church

As I entered the church, I dragged in all of my negative emotions with me, a millstone of anxiety, doubt, fear, loss, and sadness. Hanging over me was still the uncertainty of whether the baptism was going to be by full immersion or pouring of water.

As I entered the church I walked to the front where the baptismal font had been filled. It was setup just outside the doors of the iconostasis². I was able to see that I would, indeed be able to fit into it. This lessened my anxiety, but surprisingly, not by as much as I thought it would. Father must have told the very nice lady who had prepared the font that I was nervous about making sure I was fully immersed. So she filled it a little higher than they normally would have. As I approached and examined the font, she commented with a big grin that she had a paddle behind the chanters stand and could use it to hold me under! I laughed. My retort was that I’d been such a pain in the rear to Father over the past month that he’d probably just hold me under extra-long himself.

For my LDS friends and family - like LDS chapels, not all Orthodox church’s have built in baptismal fonts as traditionally, most baptisms have been of infants³. For adult baptisms, most Orthodox church’s, particularly in America, instead use large portable water containers that they can bring out, fill up, and then drain and put away after. In this case, the “font” was a large black plastic “tub” that had been decorated appropriately.

Before the service started, all those being baptised were sent to change into our baptismal clothes. Mine consisted of a white undershirt, white shorts, and a baptismal robe that I put on over top. Once we had changed we went back and sat in the pews with our families and friends.

The Introduction

Our parish priest started the baptismal service by addressing those who had come to witness the baptism. There were eight of us being baptised, and we had all brought friends and family. It was nice to be a part of this group as we had all become friends during our chatechism classes.

I don’t remember everything that Father talked about in his opening speech, but he did cover the general process and what they would be doing at each step in the baptismal service and why.

One thing that stands out to me after the fact, is that he mentioned that it is not uncommon that a demon of fear and doubt prey on those preparing to be baptised. That demon’s job was to try to prevent us from going through with it, so the first thing that the priests would do is say exorcism prayers over us as we renounced the devil.

The Exorcism