One Oil for a Whole Church

Chrismation in the Coptic Orthodox Church follows immediately after baptism: the priest anoints the newly baptised at a series of points on the body with the holy myron, and it is this anointing, not the water alone, that completes initiation. The same oil consecrates altars, church buildings and the vessels used on them. Because only the patriarch may consecrate it, and because he does so only at intervals, the supply used in every parish of the church traces back to one act performed at one place. The oil is prepared from olive oil compounded with a long list of aromatic spices and with balsam, cooked and blessed across several days of services, and then distributed to the dioceses in sealed vessels.

The arrangement is administratively deliberate. A communion spread across Egypt and, more recently, across a large diaspora, is bound together at the most personal sacramental moment by a substance that physically came from the patriarchate. It also gives the church a recurring public event of some magnitude: a consecration of the myron is attended by the bishops, is recorded, and marks a point in a patriarch's tenure. The liturgical books preserve the order of the rite in detail, and the Coptic liturgical scholarship of the twentieth century paid it close attention precisely because the texts are unusually full.