Sacraments: Anointing the Sick
This is the fifth entry in our series on sacraments. Fr Simon Cuff provides a richer picture of anointing than the typical focus on preparation for death.
Receive Christ's forgiveness, his healing and his love. May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ grant you the riches of his grace, his wholeness and his peace.
These are some of the words given by the Church of England for administering the sacrament of anointing. The sacrament of anointing might be more familiarly known as “extreme unction”, but this is misleading. There’s nothing extreme about this Sacrament. Anointing with oil has long been, and continues to be, an important part of the Christian life. As Christians, we are followers of the anointed one.
Anointing as a sacrament is no less an action of the Spirit than the “anointing” referred to in charismatic Christian circles. The sacrament of anointing, like all Sacraments, is a means by which we are sure we are in touch with the life of the Spirit, as it blows through his Church. Anointing the sick with oil is a means by which we are touched by the anointed one, Christ, and made whole.
Biblically the basis for anointing the sick with oil is found in the New Testament. The letter of James tells us to pray over and anoint with oil in the name of the Lord all in need of healing (James 5.14). Jesus commissions the twelve to anoint with oil those who are sick (Mark 6.7-9, 12-13). For this reason, sacrament anointing is administer by those ordained priests.
Like all priestly ministry, it is done on behalf of the Bishop of the area in which we minister who has the cure of souls, which she or he delegates to the priests of the diocese.
In the case of anointing, the tradition of the Bishop blessing the three oils for the year ahead in the Cathedral on Maundy Thursday is a powerful reminder of the Bishop’s connection to the whole people of God through his or her priests and deacons. The three oils blessed in that service are the oil for the sick, as well as the oil for those entering the church through baptism (oil of catechumens), and the oil used in ordination and consecrations (oil of chrism).
Whilst the cure of souls given to any priest is shared with his or her bishop, the real minister of the Sacrament, as of any Sacrament, is Christ. Whilst the priest anointing the sick is doing so on behalf of the bishop, both priest and bishop minister on behalf of Christ. It is his ministry, expressed through theirs. This is powerfully so in the sacrament of anointing. Christ, the anointed one, ministers to the sick person through the anointing with oil and action of the priest. The very use of oil points us always to Christ, the particular human being God became for us, in a particular culture, at a particular time in a particular place. A place in which oil made from the olive trees growing all around him was a staple, the stuff of everyday.
Christ, the anointed one, anoints and through that anointing brings healing. This isn’t just miraculous healing or a physical cure, but ultimate healing, ultimate wholeness. In other words, salvation. Think of the haemorrhaging woman in our Gospels. Her story is one of pain and suffering. Mark tells us she had been in agony for 12 years, had seen many doctors and spent all she had. She meets Christ. Her story is transformed by his. ‘Your faith has healed you’. The word used here doesn’t just mean healing, but salvation, sozo. ‘Your faith has saved you’. ’You have been healed’. ‘You have been saved’.
Icon. Jesus heals the blind.
The whole of the Christian life is centred on this healing. Healing is the whole of the Christian life. We pray for this or that condition or bodily affliction to be cured. We pray too that conditions which may be permanent and life-long, and ultimately life- ending, might be woven, entwined into our understanding of our own story, of who we are ultimately called to be before God.
Sometimes we get the physical cure for which we pray, often miraculously, thanks be to God. Sometimes, perhaps often, we don’t. But because healing is part and parcel of the Christian life, we know that each prayer for healing works, because each prayer for healing unites us more closely to Christ. Each prayer for healing unites the pain of our story, more closely to the transforming love of his.
It used to be that the sacrament of anointing was reserved only for those at the end of life, hence “extreme unction”. Recent years have seen anointing increasingly offered for those not only in danger of death, but more widely to those who are severely ill, and in need of healing or reconciliation, or those suffering from silent, personal or mental anguish. It should not be entered into so frequently that all sense of in extremis is lost, or the place of the Eucharist as a regular and primary sacrament of healing is misunderstood or overshadowed. (Liturgically this can be achieved by ensuring reception of communion takes place after anointing and so remains the summit of the liturgy).
Whenever we are anointed, the oil used helps to make visible something of the Christian life. Its long use as cosmetic bears witness to this. If you take some oil and rub it on your skin, your skin will take on the lustre of the oil used. Think of Psalm 133: It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
This points us to the wider use of oil in the Bible and the wider ancient world, as well as in the Church today. Oil was used in the ancient world not only cosmetically and medicinally, as in the Good Samaritan’s treatment of the injured’s wounds (Luke 10.34), but as a sign of a conferral of status. Prophets, priests and kings are anointed as a sign of their status and calling. Oil was also used in the preparation of corpses for burial.
The two other oils blessed by the Bishop on Maundy Thursday point to these wider uses, the oil of catechumens and the oil of Chrism. The oil of catechumens is used just before baptism. The timing of this anointing might strike us as odd, as baptism is the sacrament by which we enter the Church, but is anchored in the history and tradition of initiation into the Church.
In this tradition we find anointing before baptism with the oil of catechumens compared to the oil used by athletes before competing: ‘this is why the Bishop anoints you as athletes of Christ before leading you into the spiritual arena’ (John Chrysostom, Baptismal Homily 2.22). Other sources compare it to the anointing before burial, as in baptism we die and rise with Christ.
Chrism, the oil used for the anointing after baptism, as well as in ordinations, consecrations of altars and churches, hearkens to the use of oil to confer dignity and status on an individual. This is why the new monarch is anointed with chrism during the coronation service.
Tertullian (c. 155 - 240 CE) is our first witness to this anointing in the rite of baptism and makes clear this link:
When we have come out of the font, we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction, in accordance with the ancient practice whereby, since the time when Aaron was anointed with Moses, men were anointed to the priesthood with oil from a horn; from which they were called 'anointed ones' from the chrism, that is the anointing, which also lent its name to the Lord. (De Baptismo 7)
Whenever we’re anointed, we’re anointed by the anointed one. Christ anoints us through the priests of his Church. In these anointings, we are anointed into Christ, we share in the dignity and status of his eternal priesthood and kingship. As we share in the anointed one, so we share in the healing he brings. Not just momentary healing or cure, but real wholeness and healing, salvation. As Christians, anointed ones, we share more fully in to the risen life, the life for which God became one of us in the ‘anointed one’, the life to which he calls us in his church, and sustains us through his sacraments.
The sacrament of anointing, like all Sacraments, restores and refreshes us as we follow the anointed one, until we achieve ultimate wholeness and healing, until we see him face to face, and the need for Sacraments will cease. Until then, if we’re in anguish or pain, if we fear death or suffer illness, if we desire wholeness and the peace which only Christ brings, the sacrament of anointing is a means by which we hear more clearly the words with which Jesus is always calling us to find our rest in him: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11.28).
