Do you need holy water to bless sacramentals

[rd45201]

Recently a priest from our parish was in our home and was asked to bless a few statues and a St. Joseph medal. He asked if we had any holy water and seemed very mildly flustered as if he couldn’t proceed w/o holy water. My wife eventually produced water she had brought back from Lourdes which she said was “holy water from Lourdes”. (I believe that it was never blessed and wasn’t technically holy water.) The priest said a blessing over the items and sprinkled them with Lourdes water (which my wife had innocently lead him to believe was holy water). My question is this: can’t a priest simply bless a sacramental w/o using water? Also, can’t a priest simply bless any available water thus making it holy water? A few years ago, our house was blessed by a deacon and as he went from room to room he began worrying that he was “running out of holy water”. Both the deacon and the priest are very holy and reasonable men but in both instances it seemed that holy water was essential for their blessings and there seemed to be some anxiety about completing their blessings without it.

 

[YoungTradCath]

If a priest has brought his copy of the Roman Ritual to bless your house, it will almost definitely contain the formula for blessing water as well. So I suppose the short answer is that he should have been able to make his own holy water from your tap.

 

[gh4]

I’ve seen a situation where the priest was at a private home and needed holy water. We brought him a small bowl of water and he blessed it and had holy water.
I have had many rosaries blessed, and some statues and no priest has ever used holy water for that.

 

[Russ_of_Tokyo]

One priest at my church does not normally use holy water to bless objects and the other always uses it. Recently I asked the second one to bless a card with the Divine Mercy image on it and I specifically said he didn’t have to use holy water. Of course, he smiled and agreed the water could damage the card, so he did it “dry”.