What does «agua bendita» mean in Spanish?
- That which is blessed by the priest and serves for the use of the Church and the faithful. Water blessed by a priest or bishop is used for certain religious purposes. The early Church soon adopted the sprinkling of the hands and face before entering the sanctuary, prescribed by the Jewish law for the ceremonially impure. This is expressly indicated by Tertullian at the end of the second century; that the water used for this purpose was blessed by the priests is known to us from St. Jerome and the Apostolic Constitutions. The Catholic Church uses four kinds of holy water: