Traditional blessing of holy water

A couple of people asked where they could get Holy Water blessed as I described in the post "A surprise for Screwtape". It's very simple: get hold of a copy of the older ritual and ask your local priest. It will take him about five minutes. If that seems like a lot of trouble after Mass, you could perhaps invite the priest round to bless your house and ask him if he would bless some Holy Water in the old rite while he is there. Though it is normally blessed in the Church or in the Sacristy, it is quite valid to bless it in someone's home. While he is there, ask him to bless your children as well. There is a lovely blessing in the old ritual which I always use when blessing houses if children are present.

If you can't get hold of a copy of the ritual, you can download one from this page at Laudate Dominum. Go for the "Small Roman Ritual." It is a 659kb pdf file so the best thing is to right click and save it to your computer rather than try to open it in a browser window.

The Blessing of Holy Water is on pages 123-125 so you could just print those pages out. If the priest would like an English translation, you could cut and paste the text from Mulier Fortis: More about holy water. Blessing of infants is page 147-148 with English translation in parallel columns.

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