A Full Orthodox Baptismal Service is Needed for Salvation - excerpt from "Everyday Saints and Other Stories"

Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov, in his well-known book Everyday Saints and Other Stories, recorded an experience involving Elder John Krestiankin (+2006) in Russia which confirms the words of St. Kosmas and St. Basil below. Such stories reveal the necessity for a full and complete Orthodox baptismal service for the salvation of one's soul from the tyranny of Satan.

“At that time I was serving in the Donskoy Monastery. I was approached by a man of about forty, a lieutenant colonel of the police named Valery Ivanovich Postoyev. He was a nonbeliever, and had not even been baptized, but he had nowhere to go except to the Church. He had an only son also named Valery to whom unthinkable things were happening. In the presence of this boy all kinds of objects started to light on fire – all by themselves. Whenever Valery would appear, everything would start to burn: refrigerators, pillows, tables, beds, chests of drawers… The Postoyev family ceased to pay visits to others, because within twenty minutes of their visiting, fires broke out. For the same reason they could not let the boy go to school…

“I couldn’t understand why it was that the fires hadn’t stopped occurring after the baptism. At least, not until I asked the question: how long did the boy’s baptism take? The lieutenant colonel answered that it all had taken less than half an hour.

“Normally the baptism of one person takes a lot longer. And so I understood everything: the priest who had performed the sacrament had omitted certain ancient prayers, which in the Church are known as exorcism prayers. There are only four of them, and several of them are quite long. Unfortunately, it does happen that certain priests, especially those who as they would say today are of a ‘modernistic’ bent, omit these prayers, believing them to be unnecessary. Yet it is precisely through these prayers that the Church, by the power given to it by God, asks for the deliverance of the human soul from the ancient evil lurking and nestling within. But our modernists believe all of this to be strange and archaic. They are afraid to seem anachronistic and ridiculous in the eyes of their parishioners – although I have never once noticed that these prayers during baptism raise a hint of a smile even among people who were little connected to the Church.

“I wrote to Father John [Krestianken] about Valery Postoyev, and he answered me that I needed to finish reading the exorcism prayers from the baptismal rite that had been left out by the previous priest. And that is precisely what we did in the Church of the Donskoy Monastery. From that very day the fires ceased. Lieutenant Colonel Valery Ivanovich Postoyev was baptized himself, and all of his family then became our parishioners.” [1]

Father John Krestianken

A similar story has been recorded by Archimandrite Constantine Ramiotis as follows:

“God raised up a godly and insightful elder in earlier times. He was a native. His house became a church and a healing center for the many Christians who came to him. In one family, after the baptism of their little girl, at noon, while washing the baby, suddenly convulsions, crying and screaming began. This was repeated continuously for days. So, the parents thought of the kindly priest, who was in a nearby village. They took the little child. The clairvoyant priest told them rightly and sharply - the baptism is not correct; words are missing (probably exorcisms). He fulfilled their requests by reading the prayers and the demonic energy stopped.” [2]

Triple Immersion is Required

Apostolic Canon 50 requires baptism to be performed with three immersions and threatens with deposition priests and bishops who fail to do so.

CANON 50:

“If any Bishop or Priest does not perform three immersions (baptisms) in making one baptism, but only a single immersion (baptism), that given into the death of the Lord, let him be deposed. For the Lord did not say, ‘Baptize into my death’, but, ‘Go you and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’”

St. Basil the Great (+379) states:

“Whether a man have departed this life without baptism, or have received a baptism lacking in some of the requirements of the tradition, his loss is equal.”[3]

St. Kosmas Aitolos (+1779) taught that spiritual problems can result if a person is not immersed three times fully at the time of baptism.

“You, holy priests, should baptize the children of your parish according to the teaching and purpose of our holy Eastern and Apostolic Church. Immerse them in the holy font. Have plenty of water and immerse them and lift them up thrice, saying the names of [the persons of] the Holy Trinity.” [4]

and

“Holy priests, you must have large baptismal fonts in your churches so that the entire child can be immersed. The child should be able to swim in it so that not even an area as large as a tick’s eye remains dry. Because it is from there (the dry area) that the devil advances, and this is why your children become epileptics, are possessed by demons, have fear, suffer misfortune; they haven’t been baptized properly.” [5]

These quotes show how critical it is to perform baptisms correctly with three immersions and all of the required prayers. From such examples it is also evident that if the priest does not baptize a person properly, while he will have to answer to God, the person who was not baptized properly may still suffer harm despite their innocence of the wrongdoing. If spiritual problems can result from omitting exorcism prayers even for someone baptized with three immersions in the name of the Holy Trinity in the Orthodox Church, how much more so can such problems occur when heretics are received into the Church without three immersions in the name of the Holy Trinity, often without the exorcism prayers?

ENDNOTES:

1. Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov). Everyday Saints and Other Stories, pp. 324-325.

2. Ἀρχιμ. Κωνσταντίνου Ραμιώτη, Ἡ μαγεία ὑπὸ τὸ φῶς τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Ἐκκλησίας, Ἀθήνα 2002, σελ. 212-214

3. St. Basil, On the Spirit, 10:26 (NPNF 2/8:17). https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.vii.xi.html

4. Vaporis, Father Kosmas The Apostle of the Poor, p. 61

5. Vaporis, Father Kosmas The Apostle of the Poor, p. 77