The Byzantine tradition has preserved the ancient Christian custom of baptizing by triple immersion. In fact, immersion has sometimes been considered essential to the validity of the sacrament, and some extreme anti-Latin polemicists have disputed the validity of the Western rite of Baptism on the grounds that the Latins baptized by pouring. Immersion is the very sign of what Baptism means. "Water destroys one life, but reveals another; it drowns the old man and brings out the new," writes Cabasilas 479. "Drowning" cannot be symbolized otherwise than through immersion.

A person freed through Baptism from the bondage of Satan is endowed by the Spirit with the ability to "be active in the spiritual energies," as Cabasilas put it elsewhere. We have already seen that Byzantine patristic theology recognizes the connection between the gifts of the Spirit and human freedom; the redemption of mankind implies that not only human "nature" but also each person, freely and personally, will find a place for himself in the new creation, "repeat in himself" Christ again. The gift of the Spirit in Chrismation is the main sacramental sign of this particular dimension of salvation, which, according to the liturgical norm, is inseparable from Baptism. Therefore, "life in Christ" and "life in the Spirit" are not two separate forms of spirituality: they are complementary sides of the same road leading to eschatological "deification."

Usually united with Baptism in one rite of Christian initiation, Chrismation is performed separately only in cases of reconciliation with the Church of certain categories of heretics and schismatics listed in Canon 95 of the Trullo Council. The significance of Chrismation thus confirms the validity of the "seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" (this formula is pronounced by the priest when performing the anointing) of Christian Baptism performed in unusual circumstances, that is, outside the canonical boundaries of the Church.

3. Repentance

Sacramental repentance – that is, reconciliation with the Church after sins committed after receiving Baptism – developed in the West and the East in parallel. At first, it was a public act – repentance was demanded from sinners who were officially excommunicated from church communion or committed acts that deserved excommunication. But gradually, especially after the fourth century, repentance took the form of private confession, followed by a prayer for absolution of sins pronounced by a priest. And then repentance almost completely merged with the custom of receiving private spiritual instruction, especially widespread in monastic communities.

The development of the practice and theology of penance in the Byzantine world differed from their similar development in the West in that the East never knew the influence of legitimate interpretations of salvation, such as Anselm's teaching on "satisfaction." In addition, the East has never faced crises comparable to the Western Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the latter, as is known, placed special emphasis on the authority of the clergy.

Patristic and Byzantine literature on repentance is mainly of an exclusively ascetic and moral nature. Very few authors of ascetic treatises on repentance mention the sacramental absolution of sins as a formal requirement. This silence does not mean that sacramental repentance did not exist; but except in cases of formal excommunication from Communion, which was to be followed by formal reconciliation with the Church, such repentance was encouraged, but it was not insisted upon as something obligatory. In his innumerable appeals to repentance, Chrysostom often mentions "confession," that is, the opening of one's own conscience in the presence of a witness or "before the Church"; But one gets the impression that he did not at all mean regular confession in church. In nine sermons that he specifically devoted to "repentance," he mentions the Church as the immediate comforter only once: "Have you sinned? Enter the Church and repent of your sin. … Are you already old, but are you still sinning? Enter [the Church], repent; after all, this is a doctor, not a judge; here they do not interrogate, here they absolve sins" (482).

The French church historian is apparently right when he writes: "The Byzantines rarely went to confession, at least the laity, while in the monasteries... confession was practiced regularly. But was it a confession or simply an instruction from a spiritual father that guided the conscience of a simple layman? Both customs existed, and in the monasteries they were indistinguishable from each other."

Ascetic and canonical literature often mentions the requirements for the penitent – the periods of time for which the sinner is excommunicated from church communion, the prostrations and charity required as retribution for sins committed and confessed; But if we are not talking about "mortal" sins – murder, apostasy, adultery – which entail formal excommunication, then nowhere is there evidence that the absolution of sins pronounced by the priest was considered necessary for the sealing of the act of repentance. On the contrary, many sources describe the permissions given by unordained monks,484 and this custom has been preserved in Eastern monasteries to this day.

The various forms of absolution or absolution of sins, found in the Byzantine "doxologies" (euchologia) and penitentials (penitential books),485 are always framed as prayer. "In the East," writes A. Almazov, "it has always been understood that permission is expressed through prayer, and even if some kind of prayer was used; declarative formula, it implied that the remission of sins belongs to God alone" (486). All declarative formulas (I, an unworthy priest, ... I forgive and absolve..."), which crept into some Eastern Greek and Slavic "euchologies", have a post-scholastic Latin origin and were assimilated within the framework of the general Latinization of the Byzantine rite.

Byzantine theologians themselves were uncertain about the exact status of penance among the mysteria (sacraments) of the Church, and often placed it in their list of sacraments along with monastic tonsure and anointing of the sick. By the fifteenth century, however, personal confession to a priest, followed by a prayer of absolution, had become a common custom among the laity, and confession to unordained monks continued to exist in monasteries as an alternative. This lack of clarity both in practice and in theological justification had a positive consequence: after all, repentance was interpreted primarily as a kind of spiritual therapy. For sin in Eastern Christian anthropology is, first of all, an ailment, a "passion." Without denying Peter's privileged right to the keys granted to the entire episcopate, or the apostolic authority to absolve sins, and the Church is the bearer of this authority, Byzantine theologians never succumbed to the temptation to reduce sin to the concept of crime, which entails the pronouncement of sentence, punishment or forgiveness. No, Byzantine theologians always remembered that a sinner is first of all a prisoner of Satan and as such is mortally ill. For this reason, confession and repentance, at least in the ideal conception of them, have retained the features of liberation and healing, and not of judgment. Hence the great variety of forms and customs, along with the impossibility of confining this diversity within the framework of some inert theological categories.