Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States
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Why are women to refrain from taking the blessing of the Holy Communion during periods of menstruation? Why are girls baptized after 80 days and boys after only 40 days?

While many focus on spiritual purity for partaking of the Holy Communion, physical purity is also a necessary prerequisite for the Holy Communion for both genders. Physical purity includes:
  1. Cleanness of one's body including clean clothes appropriate for taking Holy Communion (blue jeans and t-shirts are not appropriate for meeting the Lord).



  2. Abstinence from marital relations both the eve of and   the day of receiving Holy Communion.



  3. Abstinence from Holy communion in the case of  acquiring a state of impurity following a dream the eve of Holy Communion.



  4. Abstinence from Holy Communion by a mother for forty days after delivery of a baby boy and eighty days after a baby girl.She then receives Holy Communion upon her children's' Baptism after the priest prays the Woman's Absolution prayer for her. The difference reflects that Eve was deceived first and led Adam to disobedience (1 Tim 2:14,15).

To further expand the topic somewhat...a person is not to walk barefoot directly after Holy Communion or a man to shave directly following the Holy Communion, to avoid bleeding right after having received the Lord Jesus Christ's Holy Blood himself. If a wound inadvertently happens, the blood must be wiped with a tissue or piece of cotton and burned.
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