The anointing of the sick: the sacrament of healing, but what is it?

The sacrament reserved for the sick was called "extreme unction". But in what sense? The catechism of the Council of Trent provides us with an explanation that has nothing disturbing: "This anointing is called" extreme "because it is administered last, after the other anointings entrusted by Christ to his Church" as sacramental signs. Therefore "extreme unction" means that which is normally received after the anointings of baptism, confirmation or confirmation, and possibly of priestly ordination, if one is a priest. Therefore nothing tragic in this term: extreme unction means the last unction, the last on the list, the last in order of time.

But the Christian people did not understand the explanation of the catechism in this sense and stopped at the terrible meaning of "extreme unction" as a definitive anointing from which there is no way back. For many, extreme unction is the anointing at the end of life, the sacrament of those who are about to die.

But this is not the Christian meaning that the Church has always given to this sacrament.

The Second Vatican Council takes up the ancient denomination "anointing of the sick" or "anointing of the sick" to return to tradition and guide us towards a more just use of this sacrament. Let us briefly go back over the centuries, to the time and places where the sacraments were instituted.

Wheat, vines and olives were the pillars of the ancient, essentially agricultural economy. Bread for life, wine for joy and songs, oil for flavor, lighting, medicine, perfumes, athletics, the splendor of the body.

In our civilization of electric lighting and chemical medicines, oil has expired from its former prestige. However, we continue to call ourselves Christians, a name that means: those who received the anointing of oil. Thus we immediately see the importance that the anointing rites have for the Christian: it is a question of manifesting our participation in Christ (the Anointed One) precisely in what defines him.

Oil, therefore, based on its uses in Semitic culture, will remain for us Christians above all the sign of healing and light.

For its properties that make it elusive, penetrating and invigorating, it will also remain the symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Oil for the people of Israel had the function of consecrating people and things. Let us remember only one example: the consecration of King David. "Samuel took the horn of oil and consecrated it with the anointing among his brothers and the Spirit of the Lord rested on David from that day on" (1Sam 16,13:XNUMX).

Finally, at the peak of everything we see the man Jesus, completely penetrated by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10,38:XNUMX) to impregnate the world of God and save it. Through Jesus the holy oils communicate to Christians the multifaceted grace of the Holy Spirit.

The anointing of the sick is not a consecration rite, like that of baptism and confirmation, but a gesture of spiritual and corporal healing by Christ through his Church. In the ancient world, oil was the medicine that was normally applied to wounds. Thus, you will remember the good Samaritan from the Gospel parable that pours on the wounds of the one who had been attacked by the robbers of wine to disinfect them and oil to soothe their pains. Once again the Lord takes a gesture of everyday and concrete life (the medicinal use of oil) to take it as an orderly ritual function for the healing of the sick and the forgiveness of sins. In this sacrament, healing and forgiveness of sins are associated. Does this perhaps mean that sin and disease are related to each other, have a relationship between them? Scripture presents death to us as linked to the sinful condition of the human species. In the book of Genesis, God says to man: "You will be able to eat from all the trees in the garden, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat, because when you ate it, you would certainly die" (Gen 2,16 17-5,12). This means that man, by his nature subjected to the cycle of birth - growth - death like all other living beings, would have had the privilege of escaping from it through his fidelity to his own divine vocation. St. Paul is explicit: this infernal couple, sin and death, entered hand in hand in the world of men: "Just as because of one man sin entered the world and with sin death, as well as death has reached all men, because all have sinned "(Rom XNUMX:XNUMX).

Now, sickness is the prelude, near or far, to the funeral march of death. Illness, like death, is part of Satan's circle. Like death, illness also has a degree of kinship with sin. By this we do not mean that one gets sick because he personally offended God. Jesus himself corrects this idea. We read in the Gospel of John: "(Jesus) passing saw a man blind from birth and his disciples asked him:" Rabbi, who has sinned, he or his parents, why he was born blind? ". Jesus replied: "Neither he sinned nor his parents, but this is how the works of God were manifested in him" "(Jn 9,1: 3-XNUMX).

So, we repeat: one does not get sick because he has personally offended God (otherwise the diseases and death of innocent children would not be explained), but we want to say that disease like death reaches and affects man only because humanity is in condition of sin, is in a state of sin.

The four gospels present us Jesus who heals the sick en masse. Together with the announcement of the word, this is its activity. The liberation from evil of so many unhappy people is an extraordinary announcement of the good news. Jesus heals them out of love and compassion, but also, and above all, to offer signs of the coming of the kingdom of God.

With the entry of Jesus on the scene, Satan notes that someone stronger than him has arrived (Lk 11,22:2,14). He came "to reduce to powerlessness by death he who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb XNUMX:XNUMX).

Even before his death and resurrection, Jesus eases the grip of death, healing the sick: in the leaps of the lame and the paralyzed healed the joyful dance of the resurrected begins.

The gospel, with acuity, uses the verb to rise to indicate such healings which are the prelude to the resurrection of Christ.

Therefore sin, sickness and death are all flour of the devil's sack.

St. Peter, in his speech in the house of Cornelius, underlines the truth of these interferences: “God consecrated in the Holy Spirit and power Jesus of Nazareth, who passed by benefiting and healing all those who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him ... Then they killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him on the third day ... Whoever believes in him obtains the remission of sins by means of his name "(Acts 10,38-43).

In his action and in his almighty death, Christ throws the prince of this world out of the world (Jn 12,31:2,1). In this perspective we can understand the true and profound meaning of all the miracles of Christ and his disciples and the sense of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick which is nothing other than the presence of Christ who continues his work of forgiveness and healing through his church. The healing of the paralytic of Capernaum is a typical example that highlights this truth. We read the Gospel of Mark in the second chapter (Mk 12: XNUMX-XNUMX).

The healing of this unhappy one highlights three wonders of God:

1 - there is a close relationship between sin and disease. A sick person is brought to Jesus and Jesus diagnoses even more deeply: he is a sinner. And it unties this knot of evil and sin not with the power of medical art, but with its omnipotent word that destroys the state of sin in that man. Illness entered the world because of sin: sickness and sin disappear together through the power of Christ;

2 - the healing of the paralytic is offered by Jesus as proof that he has the power to forgive sins, that is, to heal man also spiritually: it is he who gives life to the whole man;

3 - this miracle also announces a great future reality: the savior will bring to all men the definitive recovery from all physical and moral ills.