How to prepare Antidoron for your Little Church

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

I hope you all had a blessed and joyous Pascha, despite our current situation. As we continue to celebrate our Lord's Resurrection until His Ascension, I wanted to offer a little encouragement and talk about our Little Church. It is more important now more than ever, to keep pushing forward. Even though Great Lent is over, we need to stay vigilant and continue to pray, read the scriptures along with the lives and writing of the saints, and keep the rhythm of the Liturgical year alive and strong in our homes and hearts.

We've always talked about the little church but until recently there were a lot of things many hadn't thought about, like keeping a supply of dried antidoron, holy water (agiasmo) and holy oil in our prayer rooms or corners.

With the recent pandemic and mad rush of people to stockpile all sorts of things, I realized no one was talking about what things we might need for our spiritual lives if indeed we ended up being quarantined. So I posted a list called Orthodox Emergency Prep 101 and listed some things that Orthodox Christians would need to continue living the life of the church at home. Of course, at that time, I never imagined in my wildest dreams that we'd be denied the Church and Mysteries this long...

Below is the list of items for your prayer corner. If you don't have access to your church boookstore, you can find most of the items at Orthodox Christian Children or Archangels Books. Of course, the antidoron, agiasmo and holy oil are probably easiest to obtain from your priest.

After I posted that list, the most common questions I received was about the antidoron. Where do you get it? How do you save it without it getting old? So, I wanted to do a quick post on how to dry out your antidoron so that it could be saved and become a part of your daily prayer life at home.

*Please note: Antidoron is blessed during the Divine Liturgy. It cannot be antidoron without first being blessed.

• First, you'll need to ask your priest for some extra antidoron. It may be in abundance right now since no one is at church to receive it. Contact him and ask how you could meet up to get some.
• Next, you'll cut it up into small bite sized pieces. The smaller it is, the longer it will last and that's something you might want to keep in mind considering our current situation.
• Place the pieces on a cookie sheet and bake at 350* until hard. You don't want any moisture because that will cause it to mold. I usually bake mine for at least twenty minutes. I check this by picking up one of the larger pieces and squeezing it. If it feels a little squishy, I give it a few more minutes. You can also shake the cookie sheet a little and will hear when the pieces are hardened.
• When it comes out of the oven, let it cool COMPLETELY--remember, you want no moisture whatsoever.
• Once completely cooled, place in an airtight container. We keep a small glass jar with a sealed lid on our prayer table and any extra is placed in a ziplock bag and kept in the cupboard of our prayer table.

[video src="http://www.orthodoxmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/4ec2e2e7-2595-442e-b7a5-bfa6c97ee441-3.mov" ]

Back in the fall of 2011, I wrote an article for the Family Connections section of the Orthodox Observer. One of the things I talked about how every morning, we take a small piece of antidoron, agiasmo and crossing ourselves with holy oil after our morning prayers. I'm attaching an excerpt of the article here and I hope if you're not already in the habit of doing this that you'll be encouraged to start.