Why is it necessary for an already baptized person to be purified again?

ΤΗΕ ROLE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

previous:http://hristospanagia3.blogspot.com/2018/09/illumination.html

Well, it is not enough to be baptized; we have to undergo what we call kátharsis (purification).

Why? might somebody ask. Is not the Mystery of Baptism enough by itself to enable someone to be purified?

Yes, indeed! However, right after this sacrament, we voluntarily repeat Adam's act of disobedience, and not once, but many times, again and again.

Someone could easily wonder "How does sin enter our very being? We were only infants when we were baptized."

Look, in the beginning, the ones that inflate the sinful passions in us are our very parents and our closest relatives! They are initially the ones who inspire in us vanity, sensuality, greediness, and pride.

From then on, we cooperate, and thus we allow for the debris of the sins and the sinful passions to get into us. A wrong education leads to the production of sick human beings. The ignorance of the parents regarding the upbringing of their children bears painful results, indeed, to all of us, to their children, to the parents themselves and our society.

With all of these repeated "bravo" (to the children), the instant satisfaction of all of our weird desires, the many mollycoddlings and the beautifications from our "good" parents, they actually vaccine us with and nurture the two biggest giants of sinful passions: vanity and egoism (pride, egotism).

This is how our nous gets gradually contaminated, because of all the passions that grow in us, and, as a result of that, we lose or, better said, we "deactivate" the Holy Spirit we had received with our Baptism (by the Holy Mysteries of Holy Baptism and Holy Chrismation). So, it is necessary for us to repeat this cleansing... but this time through our sincere repentance, our tears, and our confession.

f. Savvas Agioreitis

To be continued...