April 2, 2022 - Pastor Message
04/19/2024THE YEAR OF HEALING SPIRITUAL HEALING: THE ANOINTING OF THE SICK
“Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits…So they went off and preached repentance. They drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mark 6:7,12-13).
Continuing our reflection on spiritual healing, we turn now to the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. While the circumstances that present the opportunity to celebrate this sacrament are serious physical and mental illness, we know that the human person is one, unified whole: mind, body, and spirit. If one part of our being suffers, the whole person suffers, and if we bring healing to one part, we improve the health of the whole. When we anoint the sick, then, we seek to bring healing to the whole person through the spiritual healing brought about by the grace of the sacrament.
As we did for the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, we will look first at the history of the sacrament and then, next week, at the way we celebrate it. The Anointing of the Sick flows directly from Christ’s own healing ministry. Jesus always had a special place in his ministry for the sick, and he specifically charged his apostles, and through them the Church, to continue this work. The people of Jesus’ time lacked the scientific advances of modern medicine, but they understood very well, probably better than most so-called “medical experts” today, the mind/body/spirit connection within the human person. So very early on, within the apostolic generation, the Church adopted the common medical practice of the time anointing the sick with the oil of various plants and adapted it to serve the ministry of spiritual healing by accompanying that practice with prayer by the leaders of the community. Thus the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick was born.
The spiritual healing of the sacrament naturally led early Christians to associate the Anointing of the Sick with the forgiveness of sins, which formed a strong connection between it and the other sacraments of forgiveness Baptism and Penance. Because of this connection, like Baptism (which could only be celebrated once), and Penance (which also could only be celebrated once, at least in its early stages), people in the early Middle Ages began to delay celebrating the Anointing of the Sick for as long as possible, up to the moment of death. They saw it, not as a means of healing, but as preparation for judgment before God, a sort of spiritual “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Of course the problem with delaying any sacrament until the moment of death is that no one knows exactly when a person is going to die, and so people frequently died without the benefit of the sacraments.
This problem was largely corrected by the widespread practice of infant Baptism and repeatable, private confession, but the problem persisted with the Anointing of the Sick. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Modern period, people associated the Anointing of the Sick with death. Called Extreme Unction, or “Final Anointing”, it was celebrated with a person’s final confession and Viaticum (final Holy Communion) as part of the Last Rites. It was not until the liturgical renewal of the 20th century, culminating in Vatican Council II, that the history of the sacrament was truly understood and its original, much fuller meaning rediscovered. Like all the sacraments, the Church developed new ways of celebrating it that reflect that fuller meaning. No longer called Extreme Unction, reserved for the dying to prepare them for divine judgment, it is now called the Anointing of the Sick, available to all who suffer from serious illness to heal them and make them whole, just as Jesus’ own healing ministry was so long ago.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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