The Ecclesial Function of Sacred Infirmity: How Anointing of the Sick Actualizes the Significant Nature of Illness and Death

 The Ecclesial Function of Sacred Infirmity   

How Anointing of the Sick Actualizes the Significant Nature of Illness and Death

• Introduction

• Sacral Matter and Sacral Action: Oil and Anointing

• Oil as Sacral Matter

• Sacrament of the Sick: Receptive Sacral Matter and Corporeal Signification

• Sacrament of the Sick: Nature and Frequency

• The Baptismal Call and The Three Significations of the Anointing of the Sick

• Signifying Kingship in Sickness and Death

• Signifying Prophecy in Sickness and Death

• Signifying Priesthood in Sickness and Death

• Conclusion

 

Introduction

In the middle of this past summer, I was walking out to my shed to do my pre-dawn exercises and prayers.  As I brought up my phone to select some music, I noticed a push notification for a message on a social media app.  That is a very rare thing for me, so I opened the app and the message was from a professional colleague.  This colleague is an acquaintance.  Our social orbits rarely meet at work, but, if I saw them at work, I may or may not have a surface level cordial conversation.  In short, we are not deeply intimate friends, not intimate enough to warrant social media messaging.  The message complimented me on something I had done at a faculty in-service two or three years before. It was odd, surprising, and edifying.  I responded with gratitude and well wishes.  A few days later I got a response that changed the tone of the message for me.    

The totally odd timing of the message coupled with the long delay simply to write “not well” brought to memory something that the humdrum of the summer season had lulled me into forgetting.  This colleague was very sick at the end of the previous school year.  Not cold and allergy sick, but like, repeated hospital stays sick.  I realized that the message was probably part of a list of messages they were sending to people they knew as they were “getting her affairs in order” in infirmity or before dying.. 

The message was complementary, but much more profoundly, it was a sign to me; a memento mori, and a wake-up call.  In a society where we push infirmity and death to the hidden corners of our experience, and then the hidden corners of our minds, it was surprisingly easy for me to fail to recall such a central experience of someone else. When such a sign comes, it is jarring.  But in the Church, this need not be the case, this should not be the case.  Our sacramental life, the anchor of our lived experience of Christ, provides for a relationship with this exact situation.   

The purpose of this treatise is to explore the effective grace of the Anointing of the Sick, especially concerning corporeal signification of the infirmed. The hope is to offer engagement skills for the infirmed, those aiding them, and the entire church who are praying with them.   With this in mind, we are seeking to expand how the experience of Unction is perceived, moving the perception from one of a sacrament aimed at the solitary experience of a dying person, to a fully developed experience of the sacrament in its ecclesiological function.

Sacral Matter and Sacral Action: Oil and Anointing

Oil as Sacral Matter

We will begin by discussing the most popularly prominent aspect of an anointing, the oil.  The treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self discussed how confluential sacral matter is integrated into receptive sacral matter during sacramental rituals.  That is to say, human bodies engage and become one with their environment when the ritual is properly executed. For a treatise on Anointing of the Sick would help to begin by an analysis of how oil functions as confluential sacral matter.  Our aim is to discuss how we interact with it in ritual life and some possibilities as to what these interactions symbolize and signify. In The Three Tiered Integration of Self, we discussed how in sacramental rituals there is the possibility for integration by tactile contact.  How this integration operates with oil may be a good place to start.  From our analysis, we will see that a fundamental aspect of this sacrament is the relationship between the infirmed and the community.  This runs contrary to the perception of this sacrament as simply an individualized “boost of grace”.

     Integration by tactile contact is when a personal “union in being” with the material of the external world is achieved.  It is performed by a tactile shift of one’s locus of being by the use of an inanimate matter.  One’s locus of being is where, in one’s body, one perceives one’s “self” to be. Usually, modern westerners perceive our “self” to be in our head right behind our eyes.  But as we discussed in the treatises Corporeal Unitive Fulfillment in the Eschaton and A Diarchic Sex Manual with practice it is possible to shift one’s locus of being in one’s body by exercising cognitive emptiness and sensory stimulation.  This technique is a way to help reintegrate one’s sense of self with one’s environment and one’s neighbor.  Through this technique, the sacraments help heal the alienation between humanity and the cosmos wrought by original sin. 

Whereas water, wine, and bread can bind through these integrations, they are primarily connected to life, its generation, sustenance, and joy.  However, oil seems to have the particular role of binding when functioning as confluential sacral matter. First, it is the binding agent of the bread of the Eucharist itself. But more importantly, as a tactile integration.  It allows for ease of tactile integration by human contact by providing smooth frictionless, yet tactically intensified motion of skin across the skin in order to better allow for the exercise of locus of being shifting.  It seems to be an instrument of interhuman intimacy when such intimacy is made difficult by friction.  

Oil is a binding agent as a salve.  After a wound is cleaned, it is bound and sealed with oil.  Both cleaning and binding point to the bio-healing property of oil and how it is particularly situated in postlapsarian life.  Bread (food), water, and wine (joy) are experiences of Eden and presumably the Eschaton.  But healing was not necessary in Eden.  Thus the sacralization of oil is fundamental to our situation now in the world as we experience it.  The repetition of the healing sacraments is indicative of the rhythm of the cycle of sin and the cycle of health, sickness, and healing as we experience it, even in the most healthy stages of our lives.  When Eden dissolved, there was a dis-integration of humanity and of the cosmos.  The journey toward reintegration in the Eschaton is a series of steps and missteps and the sign of oil is extremely appropriate to this journey.  It signifies the healing of the body as a salve and interpersonal healing as a tactile facilitator of interhuman communion.  

In salvation history the agent of that reintegration is God in the person of the Spirit, particularly acting through the sacramental water and oil.  The treatise Christian Ontology discussed the person of the Spirit as the binding love between the Father and the Son.  The “bond” is ontological.  In as much as a bond is real, given the nature of Christian ontology, the multiple becomes simple while remaining multiple. For personal realities, the bond is love (The Spirit).  For physics, in general, there are many bonds, such as gravity, electricity, magnetic etc.  On the experiential level of humanity, oil is a beautiful binder.  Its use is simple, practical, and effective. It does not take theoretics or education to use oil as a cooking agent or quick medicine.  This common human experience is why natural plant based oil is so appropriate as confluential sacral matter.

So for example, oil was used as a sign of hospitality in biblical times. Hospitality is welcoming a stranger and forming a bond of comfort and protection.  Christ himself chastised the Pharisees who had invited him to dinner in Luke 7 because they did not anoint his head with oil, while the penitent woman anointed his feet with tears.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, one of the acts of kindness the Samaritan does to the man who is robbed is to pour oil on his wounds and seal them up for better healing. 

In the Chrism Mass, there are three types of oils that are produced for sacramental use.  Since this treatise concerns the Anointing of the Sick, the first we may note is the Oil of the Infirmed.  It is used for the blessings involved in the Sacrament of the Sick.  The second is the oil of the Catechumen.  This is the oil in Baptism as an anointing of the Christian as priest, prophet, and king just prior to being baptized.  The most famous is the Chrism oil, noted for the smell it emits due to being mixed with balsam.  Chrism has the specific purpose of consecration, that is, of setting aside or actively and fully developing receptive sacral matter as such.  To put it another way, Chrism completes the process of conforming human bodies to be able to purposely work toward a sacred.  Chrism is used in the sacraments of Confirmation and Ordination, as each of these sets the human body aside as an instrument of God in a specific way, Confirmation as a fully integrated priest, prophet, and King, Ordination specifically as a priest in persona Christi in the ritual system of the Church.

Consecration itself, like oil as a sign, is a concept rooted in postlapsarian existence.  In Paradise, there is no need to “set aside the sacred''.  All of reality is manifestly sacred.  It is only in this postlapsarian existence that we need times, places, spaces, objects, and people to be set aside from the maelstrom of postlapsarian chaos.  The consecrated object or body is specified for attunement to the transcendent in a way that relates us back to paradise and forward to the Eschaton.  

The collect for the Chrism Mass, where all three oils are consecrated, states, 

O God, who anointed your Only Begotten Son

with the Holy Spirit

and made him Christ and Lord,

graciously grant

that, being made sharers in his consecration,

we may bear witness to your Redemption in the world.

Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The collect shows that the other two oils, catechumen and infirmed, offer by their blessings a foretaste and strengthening of the original investment of consecration and are intricately connected to the redemption through the paschal mystery.  It prepares and strengthens one to receive or continue in the role of consecration.  The oils of blessing offer the gift of fortitude in one’s conformity to God and the Church.  Since the mission of Christ and his church is the inter-re-integration of Humanity as well as a reintegration of humanity with God (cancellation of the alienation of sin) oil as the sacral binding agent is the perfect sign for this healing.  Also, the role of the oil as confluential sacral matter has a significant relationship with the receptive sacral matter of the sacrament and our ability to corporally signify.   

Sacrament of the Sick: Receptive Sacral Matter and Corporeal Signification

 

Sacramental ritual has three aspects, matter (the physical stuff of the ritual), form (the words to be spoken), and ritual action (the matter of the ritual must be manipulated).  Often there is a requirement of confluential sacral matter which will come into play for the ritual. One example of this is the oil we discussed in the last part.  But in every case, the minimal sacral matter will be at least two human bodies, often an ordained priest and at least one baptismal priest.  These human bodies and their physical relationship will have a key role in signifying the mystery of the sacrament through parallel signification.   Parallel Signification refers to corporeal signification as presented by two people, where the relationship, physical or psychospiritual, affects the sacramental signification. No sacrament is done in isolation.  All of them take at least two people to perform.  The sacraments are a communal exercise and impact both the people maneuvering the ritual and those who are part of the community, yet not “directly” involved in the ritual action. 

Once that material is present, the sacramental matter is then “manipulated”.  That is, it is ritually maneuvered in a way that signifies divine mysteries according to the precepts of calculated ritual.  In these seven instances, the ritual comes with the added strength of the grace of a sacrament.  Part of that manipulation that concerns parallel signification in a sacramental ritual is the “form” of the sacrament.  The “form” is the particular words that must resonate from the vocal cords of one body (usually the ordained priest) and be received by the eardrums of that priest and another (others).  That is to say, the eardrums of both the ordained and the baptized priests. 

For the Sacrament of the Sick, the required matter for the Sacrament of the Sick consists of two human bodies (one ordained and one infirmed) and the Oil of the Infirmed.  The manipulation of sacral matter is defined thusly, 

The celebration of the sacrament includes the following principal elements: the "priests of the Church”- in silence - lay hands on the sick; they pray over them in the faith of the Church- this is the epiclesis proper to this sacrament; they then anoint them with oil blessed, if possible, by the bishop.

This contact through a binding facilitated by the Oil of the Infirmed signifies Christ (through the ordained priest) becoming one with his suffering church (the infirmed baptized priest).  It is experientially affected through tactile integration and significantly affected through oil as a sign of healing and a sign of investment in office.

The form of the sacrament prayed is, "Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up."

When the minister asks the Lord in his love and mercy to help us, the question we will explore in this treatise is, “help how?”  If graces are given, we must be able to recognize them in order to cooperate with them.  A major aspect of this cooperation is the conscious activation of corporeal signification.  The first and most obvious grace of the “Sacrament of the Sick'' would be physical healing or prolonged life.  The signification here is presented in beautiful form in the healing of the blind man in John 9.  The gospel shows an anointing, with Christ’s saliva instead of oil, that results in healing.  Before the anointing, the disciples ask, who sinned that this man was born blind.  Christ’s answer reveals an agenda of corporeal signification “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”  In the Anointing of the Sick, physical healing itself can be the sign.  The personal cooperation of the baptismal priest, then, is to make this signification known, as the blind man tried to do before Pharisees.  The unfolding of the chapter before the Pharisees offers the blueprint for the baptismal priest and their response to the bio-healing.   

Bio-healing is a real possibility from this sacrament.  But it is the more rare grace.  Standard commentary on the Sacrament of the Sick uniformly disassociates the sacrament from any form of mechanical medicinal procedure strictly for the purposes of bio-healing. Thus as Pope Saint Paul IV states in On the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, 

The Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing so as to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord. But even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses. Thus St. Paul must learn from the Lord that "my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness," and that the sufferings to be endured can mean that "in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his Body, that is, the Church."

Bio-healing should be understood and accepted as possible, but not expected as merited through participation in the sacrament.  Even when bio-healing takes place, John 9 shows us that the reason is not simply for the person healed.  There is a communal purpose to the healing.  The “glorification” is a reciprocal relationship that elevates to the transcendent.  The mode of participation is one of receptive sacral matter, receiving grace as it is given (however that may be) in order to cooperate with it and then extending that grace outward to the community to edify the community upward.

The Catechism highlights three ways that the sacrament offers grace.  The three purposes begin with the individual, then relate that individual to Christ, and lastly, take the relation to Christ and offer it to the community.  First, the sacrament offers “strengthening, peace, and courage to overcome the difficulties that go with the condition of serious illness or the frailty of old age.” This allows us to trust God and avoid temptations to despair or anxiety.  As the blessing for the Oil of the Infirmed states, 

Saint James bears witness to the use of the Oil of the Sick. It offers the sick a remedy for infirmity of body and soul, so that they can bravely endure and fight against evils and obtain pardon for sins.

From this grace, one is seeking healing of the soul, which opens one to the possibility of a healing of the body through the sacrament, or an acceptance of the will of God regarding illness or death. Thus the operable grace is certainly spiritually disposed and possibly physically effective.

The second grace is a particularly contextualized union with the passion of Christ.  Again the Catechism states, “in a certain way he [the infirmed] is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior's redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus.” Any guidance on exactly how one participates with this grace is not mentioned.  Ritually, in the sacrament, there is a true binding between the ordained priest, in persona christi, and the infirmed.  This tactile integration is a sign of the binding of the infirmed and the passion of Christ.  But if the infirmed is unconscious, the locus of being shifting necessary for an experience from the end of the infirmed is impossible.   It is hoped that in the next section we can develop skills for recognition of this grace and cooperation with it, even beyond the personal experience of the infirmed.  

The connection to the Passion offers a special grace concerning the infirmed’s disposition toward death.  The Catechism calls the sacrament 

a preparation for the final journey. If the Sacrament of Anointing of the sick is given to all who suffer from serious illness and infirmity, even more rightly is it given to those at the point of departing this life; so it is also called sacramentum exeuntium (the sacrament of those departing).138 The Anointing of the Sick completes our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it. 

    

We can see here that there is an objective connection between Baptism and the Sacrament of the Sick.  With a synoptic view of two sacraments, we can begin to see the breadth of participation in sacramental life from beginning to end.  

Baptism leaves an indelible mark on the one baptized.  As a sacrament, it creates receptive sacral matter making the human a “significant being.  Now, as a Christain, the human can use their bodies to signify divine mysteries, that is, their bodies can be used to symbolically communicate these mysteries and affect what they communicate.  This is most notable in the roles of priest, prophet, and king.  Confirmation seals this vocation onto the soul.  It offers particular gifts attuned to the will and character of the individual and offers graces for full cooperation in the mystical body to signify appropriately to the individual.  At this point, the individual is sealed with the Spirit and tasked to fully appropriate their role as priest, prophet, and king in a way that is harmonious with the Church but suited to their individual makeup and unique presentation of the imago dei.  From there the individual can discern a path of signification and further sacramentally invest by seeking ordination or marriage.  These sacraments affect the Christain, indelibly in the case of orders or indissolubly in the case of marriage.  They allow for the Christan to signify with their life according to a particular trajectory.  Ordination allows for the priest’s body to become a ritual object in the sacramental system and signify Christ’s presence as the priest operates in persona Christi.  The bodies of the married couple, by being male and female bound in a relationship of nuptial love, become significant of the Trinitarian relationship and subsequently signs of all loving relationships depending on how they seek or need to signify.

These sacraments set trajectories, but then there are sacraments that are repeated and offer some sort of sustenance and/or healing we need to navigate this postlapsarian world.  This is obviously true of the other healing sacrament, Confession, which is a sacrament of maintenance resulting from personal sin accrued after baptism.  Eucharist, as the source and summit of the sacraments, functions in every way as a sacrament.  It is a sacrament of initiation, healing, and vocation (in that it is the pinnacle of how we express our various vocations and ministries).

The last sacrament that repeats is the Sacrament of the Sick. Concerning the repeatability of Unction, Saint Thomas Aquinas states in the Summa, 

A character is not imprinted except in those sacraments whereby man is deputed to some sacred duty. Now this sacrament is for no other purpose than a remedy, and man is not deputed thereby to do or receive anything holy. Therefore it does not imprint a character.

Aquinas disputes the character change because Unction imparts no “duty” but is only a remedy.  But as we shall see, both this second grace we are discussing now and the third do indeed impart a duty.  Indeed, depending on how one defines “sacred duty” it would be hard to argue that any sacrament doesn’t impart some sort of duty.  To remedy self and the earth is the duty of every Christian and each sacrament invests one toward that duty in a particular way. 

The Sacrament of the Sick seems to be the corporeal corollary to Confession.  One heals the body, one heals the soul.  But we have already discussed how bio-healing is not to be expected, only accepted. Anointing of the Sick is so much more than the bio-corollary of Confession.  The particular signification of the anointing deals with the physical but like all sacraments communicates spiritual mysteries.  For this sacrament, the mysteries include the nature of sickness, death, theodicy, and redemptive suffering.  This is why it is particularly connected to the paschal mystery of Christ that we are baptized into.  Through baptism, we are already cleansed of the guilt of original sin, but we are not free of its effect. 

There may be a bifurcation of the body and soul between Confession and anointing, but both respond with both body and soul because sacraments are outwards signs of invisible mysteries. The differing approaches of healing run thusly, Confession concerns our personal failings, as we succumb to the temptations of concupiscence, the effects of our sins, and God’s mercy when we turn to him.  That sacrament has everything to do with our personal sin, how we use our knowledge and will contrary to God’s will.  Anointing concerns the lingering effects of Original Sin on humanity as a whole; that is, sickness, dissolution, and death.  The inevitability of these things is beyond our personal control, but this sacrament disposes us to their use in a redemptive context.  The anointing signifies how, thanks to Christ, these things we see as horrible somehow relate to the offices of priest, prophet, and king.  Through the sacrament, the infirmed or dying becomes a new sign for us of what it means to be a suffering servant, a dissolving priest, prophet, and king.  Through their experience, they are making up “what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.”

The body of the infirmed or dying being a sign leads us from the second grace to the third grace of the Sacrament, the so-called “ecclesial grace.  The Catechism states,

The sick who receive this sacrament, "by freely uniting themselves to the passion and death of Christ," "contribute to the good of the People of God.” By celebrating this sacrament the Church, in the communion of saints, intercedes for the benefit of the sick person, and he, for his part, though the grace of this sacrament, contributes to the sanctification of the Church and to the good of all men for whom the Church suffers and offers herself through Christ to God the Father. 

This passage demonstrates how the sacrament forms the body into a sign for the duration of their infirmity for the community.  The body becomes an object of focus for intercessory prayer, ritually allowing the community to express love by its very existence for as long as it may exist thus.  As an object of concern, the infirmed body becomes an outlet for members of the mystical body to offer sacrifice, through care, prayer, loving acts of charity etc. Conversely, the anointed infirmed becomes a channel of redemptive suffering, able to better offer their sufferings as sacrifices.  Through this sacrament, they are able to affect Christ’s mastery over infirmity and death.  That mastery is not necessarily the ability to heal and avoid, but the ability to redeem, to glorify God through them.  With the grace of Christ and the aid of the Church, the infirmed are able to, redeem and transform an apparent defeat and shame into a victory.  In sum the Catechism states, 

By the sacred Anointing of the Sick and the prayer of the priests, the whole Church commends those who are ill to the suffering and glorified Lord, that he may raise them up and save them. and indeed she exhorts them to contribute to the good of the People of God by freely uniting themselves to the Passion and death of Christ.

Sacrament of the Sick: Nature and Frequency

Once, I was in a conversation with a consecrated virgin about her choices in life.  My response to her situation was, “so basically your vow is a double down on your baptismal vows? It operates off that effective grace?”  She agreed.  I bring this up because it seems like we could have wise councilors who could help the infirmed and dying participate with their baptismal grace by means of their sickness without a sacrament as such?  We could conceive of para-liturgical sacramentals that can help with this, even involving the Oil of the Infirmed.  But why have a full blown sacrament? Since Baptism already conforms us into the person Christ as significant beings (beings that signify sacramentally), what specifically is happening that is not already available through the other sacraments?

In the Summa, Saint Thomas Aquinas founds his advocacy for Unction being a sacrament on its ability affect its purpose,

The difference between these is that a sacrament is an action of the Church that reaches to the principal effect intended in the administration of the sacraments, whereas a sacramental is an action which, though it does not reach to that effect, is nevertheless directed towards that principal action. Now the effect intended in the administration of the sacraments is the healing of the disease of sin. 

But if the effect is simply the healing of sins, then why not just offer Confessions.

There are two keys to understanding the necessity of anointing as a sacrament.  The first lies in the requirement that the infirmity is life threatening.  One does not receive the Sacrament of the Sick for a cold unless one is immunocompromised such that it is life threatening.  The second lies in the sacrificial economy between the ordained and baptized priest in the context of the Eucharist.  We will offer a synopsis of the second and then explain by the first.

We first examined the sacrificial economy of the mass in the treatise The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church.  Ther we noted,

In ministering the ordained priest is Christ (in persona Christi) and the Church (standing before Christ) during the ritual in a resonation of Christ who is God and man.  The priest “collects” the sacrifices of the baptismal priesthood, performed in the world, into one and all are offered as one sacrifice through the mass.  This healing and sacralization of the world by the baptismal priesthood, collected and offered by the ordained priesthood, binds the sacrifice of the mystical body of Christ (the church) the corporeal body of Christ, sacrificed on the cross, and makes these sacrifices effective.  This back and forth is what we are calling the sacrificial economy between the baptized and ordained priesthood.    

The sacrifices the baptismal priests are performing happen outside of the liturgical ritual.  They are the modes and methods of “living sacrifice” that are brought to the Eucharist in order to be collected.  The sacrificial economy is the way in which the Eucharist sanctifies the baptismal priest and it is the way that the baptismal priest sanctifies the world.  In the Handbook for a Pre-Liturgical Examination of Sacrifices by the Baptismal Priest we offered skills for the baptismal priest to actively bring their sacrifices to the Eucharist for the collect.

As a sacrament, the effect of Anointing of the Sick is of a particular fortitude of anointing.  It is the gift of strength to effectively participate in the sacrificial economy of the Church absent the ability to participate in the liturgy.  For any other baptismal priest, the assumption is that all of their sacrifices are in queue to attend the next liturgy for the collect. Even if they are a missionary in a far off land, bereft of liturgical access at present, it is assumed they will attend liturgy at their earliest convenience, even if it is years away.  But when the danger of death looms, or infirmity cripples in anticipation of death, that access is not an assumption.  The anointing is that allows sacrificial effectiveness even outside the liturgical context because of the circumstances of impending death.  This ability allows for the preparation for death of Unction and for the protection from anxiety needed to avoid despair through fortitude.  One can be sure that their sincerity in sacrifice is effective.  

If death and illness are abated through healing, then this particular anointing is no longer needed and it is assumed the baptismal priest will resume the ordinary means of the sacrificial economy.  Should the baptismal priest be so infirmed as to not be able to attend liturgy and there is danger of death, Anointing of the Sick offers extra liturgical access to the sacrificial economy, especially concerning how one’s infirmity and impending death are part of that economy. And, in case of manifest danger of immediate death, the anointing becomes Extreme Unction, which forgives all sins, prepares for death and sacral activates sacrificial offices of the baptismal priest concerning their death.  This extremity is provided because they may not be able to do these things themselves consciously or presently purposefully due to the nature of the infirmity.  But as active baptismal priests, it is assumed they would have if they could have.  A good Chrisitan keeps an appropriate thanatosian piety and should be intentionally preparing for the reception of this sacrament throughout their life.

All this may take place in grave circumstances with little evidence to provide hope, yet God saves and there is actual bio-healing.  This possibility is the reason for the repeatability of this sacrament.  As Aquinas says in the Summa,

No sacramental or sacrament, having an effect that lasts forever, can be repeated, because this would imply that the sacrament had failed to produce that effect; and this would be derogatory to the sacrament. On the other hand a sacrament whose effect does not last forever, can be repeated without disparaging that sacrament, in order that the lost effect may be recovered. And since health of body and soul, which is the effect of this sacrament, can be lost after it has been effected, it follows that this sacrament can, without disparagement thereto, be repeated.

The repetitious nature is not just because sometimes we make a mistake in our diagnosis, and they actually weren’t going to die.  If the sacrament provides for the possibility of healing miraculously, it is still assumed that the person will die someday.  The repeatability of the anointing has everything to do with the nature of corporeal signification.  The healing is a sign, the second danger and anointing is a different sign.  These divine mysteries are multifaceted and repeatability allows for utilization of the multitude.

Sacraments that repeat are a fascinating study. The Sacrament of the Sick is one that is most rarely used. Of the repeatable sacraments, canon law requires us to receive Eucharist and go to Confession at least once a year.  One can get a cultural insight into a person based on their belief regarding how often one SHOULD go otherwise.  The theological conservative would tout frequent Confession and minimal reception of the Eucharist.  Meanwhile, the theological progressive tends to promote frequent communion and confession only for mortal sin (under a rare interpretation). Catholic cultures tend to uphold one or the other position. As the frequency of reception of the Eucharist arose last century, the frequency of Confession declined.  The reasons for this are complex, but it is an interesting correlation.  

In the last few decades, there has been a slow shift to increase in the reception of the Anointing of the Sick. This sacrament remains very “under the radar” and very disconnected from the life of the everyday Western Catholic in that we are more and more a culture that does not like to confront sickness and death. We would rather adopt the western secular model of avoidance and denial.  If they “call for a priest” something must have gone horribly wrong.  But part of the sign of the sacrament is that it hasn’t.  The presence of infirmity and in postlapsarian reality have always been inevitable.  But now they are redeemed by Christ and are now modes of glorifying God.  Given the method of cooperation with grace, this sacrament should be on all Catholic’s minds constantly.  We should all be looking for the opportunity to engage in parallel signification with an infirmed baptismal priest by sacrificial acts of charity.  This sacrament is not meant to be a solitary experience offered by a technician called an ordained priest.  

Anointing of the Sick has been growing in frequency ever since the Church re emphasized that it can be used for grave sickness and not just imminent death.  As a sacrament, it seems to be developing as to how often it should be used.  The dynamism of application grapples with the metric of use and the definition of “sickness”.  Which sicknesses are grave and which are not?  What is “danger of death”? Surely to be alive is to be in danger of death. When my spouse and I were expecting our first child we had a question for our pastor.  Is Anointing of the Sick appropriate for going into delivery? On the one hand, it is a life-threatening situation.  On the other hand, pregnancy in and of itself is not an illness, it is a natural process of life and is, in fact, teleologically life giving.  The ultimate answer was no, it is not necessary for a pregnancy without specific complications.  It is not required or available any more than driving one’s car, which is dangerous, requires anointing.  But our question hints at the popular mystery this sacrament holds in a culture where sickness and death are taboo.    

The Sacrament of the Sick offers powerful graces for the recipient and for those in the community. As a sacrament that powerfully uses corporeal signification, our best tact may be to emphasize that signification and its utility as opposed to drawing up specific bio-metric regulations for administration. Perhaps as a response to our avoidance through the myth of mastery (the temptation of the serpent of Eden), we can sculpt a better culture of exercise concerning the Sacrament of the Sick and employ the sacrament in a way that allows us to experience the gospel and signify life in Christ.  With that in mind, we can begin the exploration of varieties of signification in the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. 

In this section, we started by reviewing the nature of sacramental matter concerning the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.  We started with an analysis of oil as confluential sacral matter, reviewing the signs and symbology of oil.  We then proceeded to the role of receptive sacral matter in the sacrament.  In part two we noted the relational aspect of the ordained priest and the baptismal concerning parallel signification.  We went on to discuss the three graces of the Sacrament of the Sick, fortitude, union with Christ’s Passion, and the Ecclesiological grace.  We pondered why this ritual needs to be a sacrament proper and not simply a sacramental piety.  And, lastly, we commented on the repetitive nature of the sacrament and speculated on the frequency of its use.

The Baptismal Call and The Three Significations of the Anointing of the Sick

Each of the three roles of our baptismal call is a product of postlapsarian existence.  In Eden, God is king, and humanity is justified.  Therefore there is no need for prophets to call back the heart or priest to sacrifice or mediate.  These roles begin as a crutch to aid humanity in the difficult terrain of alienation.  As a crutch, they can be corrupted or function appropriately.  With the coming of Christ, these roles are all significantly actualizable in each Christian by their initiation into the Church.  Concerning Unction, we will see the anointing of Kingship is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as a relationship of respect and dignity.  The anointing of prophet is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as a call or proclamation.  The anointing of priesthood is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as an effect of mediation and sacrifice.   Our analysis of how these roles significantly apply it to the Sacrament of the Sick will begin with kingship.  Thus the trajectory runs from the infirmed, how they regard themselves and how they are regarded, to the message the informed have for the church, to the sanctifying relationship of the infirmed and the church.  

Signifying Kingship in Sickness and Death

    The treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent explored how the concept of hierarchy pervades catholic and Christian thought.  We noted that there was no recognizable hierarchy in Eden.  Rather, the natural state was the greatest, God, serving the least, humanity.  Christan power dynamics were not “Christian” they were simply natural.  In such a case there is no “hierarchy” in any sense that we mean the word in postlapsarian reality. In that treatise we noted,

In the Garden, there would be no need of conception of a hierarchical structure.  In postlapsarian reality concupiscence typically corrupts the aid supplied by God.  When humans willfully cooperate with concupiscence divine aid becomes a hindrance.  We noted how the unity of sex is corrupted by the objectification of lust.  The community of eating is ruined by the self-centered ingratitude of gluttony.  Now we have the protection and order that is supposed to be offered by a hierarchy manifesting as social injustice, such that those who are meant to be the shepherds, protectors, and servants of the people end up being the abusers and oppressors.  Nowhere in the Bible is this more clear than in 1 Samuel chapter 8 where Samuel offers a warning to the Israelites concerning their request for a king.

With the coming of Christ, we see the fulfillment of kingship in a return to the servant leader, who is possessed of absolute humility.  He does not come as a lordly figure. “In him there was no stately bearing.”  The treatise Adaptive Integralism, noted that he enacts his kingship and wields his authority in such as that the power structures of this world deem him a criminal.  In that treatise, we asked the question,

So what type of “king” is Christ?  As he said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.”  According to John chapter 6 he rejects both national and economic models while he was walking the Earth.  Just after the feeding of the five thousand the gospel states, “When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.”  Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.”  . . .

Unlike kings of this world, he does not persuade by political, or brutal, national, or economic force.  Rather he incarnates among the lowest of the low and poorest of the poor.  He associates with those left behind by society and seeks to bring them into a relationship with God.  These that are abandoned by the civil powers (presumably because they are useless) are most ready to rely on God.  The beatitudes in both Matthew and Luke indicate the usefulness of this strategy.  They are likely to listen to a message of hope from God because God is the only one who has not ab andoned them.  

Because of the way our culture separates church and state, it sometimes becomes difficult for us to see the connection between secular dominion and spiritual action. But on both the individual level and the social level they function together.  Our ability to exercise dominion over the earth works hand in hand with our call to justification.  Sickness is also social, but death is a deeply individual experience. We may or may not be able to exercise dominion over our infirmities, but when it comes to death, as an experience, we have no proper physical dominion.

Regarding death, and in many cases illness that would require anointing, the only dominion one may have access to is their own disposition toward their condition.  In this respect, the anointing is truly an Unction of strength. The call to kingship in serious sickness or death is a call to order one’s interior domain. The strength it supplies is the grace of beatitude, and the gratitude and the humility of appropriate thanatosian piety.

The first strength needed is the continuance of the cardinal virtues, faith, hope, and love.  Serious illness and death are conditions that radicalize a personality.  All of our psycho-spiritual defense mechanisms will be heightened.  It is possible that the ways in life that we have habitually allowed grace to be dormant, or even resisted it will now come into play to give us an anxious and fruitless experience of illness or dying.  In this last leg of life, the need for extra sanctifying grace cannot be denied.  That grace may be infused or it may be that we have attuned our lives as exercises of faith, hope, and love.  In that case, the grace of Unction is a heightening of this attunement.  Most of us are not experts at the employment of these virtues, so Unction, as a sacrament, gives the grace of strength to inflame what skills we have, or possibly even infuse in us these virtues, allowing us the ability to cooperate with them.  Faith and hope are obviously key consolations in these distressing times.  

The greatest is love, and the ability to see one’s dying experience as something beyond a solitary journey.  It is love that allows for the appropriation of the roles a prophet and priest one must take as one aims one intention regarding dying “outward” toward the church.  For this one must exercise interior dominion and order one’s soul toward Christian power dynamics, such that one is a servant even in this extreme situation.  In a soul possessed of beatitude, there is a common aspect of inversal unity and of debilitation as humility.  On the approach to death, in as much as one can, one has a chance to take control of their experience of dying and employ humility in their interior life.  This particular exercise of dominion is what will allow the ability to exercise the gifts of priesthood and prophecy one may be called to signify by their illness or death.  Upon dissolution in this world, a severe temptation is bitterness upon loss.  The less we intentionally exercised our baptismal call and lived the gospel, the more powerfully this temptation is likely to manifest.  The regrets we face and the loss of our hopes unrealized are no doubt painful experiences.  Unction, in its ability to forgive and assure, is a sacrament to alleviate this temptation and strengthen us toward our task, the task of dying well.  The forgiveness strengthens us against despair and all of our regrets and fosters gratitude for the good that our lives have afforded us and others.  The graces of faith and hope strengthen our assurance of a life acceptable to God.

What one will notice about this aspect of “baptismal kingship” is that, even here, as a kingship of the interior, it is still not simply internally focused.  The sacramental life of the church is an ecclesiological function, it is fundamentally communal.  Even in what seems like an absolutely solitary experience, the sacrament draws the dying out to regard others, to order their interior life as king so that they can intentionally and effectively use their illness and death as a priestly and prophetic exercise for the church.  In this, the church has responses that the people of God should have to the role of the dying in their community.  The office of the king, “The Lord’s Anointed” carries with it a certain reverence which this sacrament invests upon the dying and which must be respected by the greater church.

Again, in Christain power dynamics, the greatest serves the least.  In our society, the dying are most certainly the most “useless” and therefore the most vulnerable.  It is hard for humans to conjure good reasons to serve those who are presumed to be leaving this plane of existence imminently.  That can only be calculated as a waste of resources, material and spiritual.  In our society, the push for euthanasia is base on just such calculations of efficiency.  By anointing the dying they become a sign of royalty.  Very often in the Old Testament, when the title of “the Lord’s anointed” is used to describe a king, it is used to imply a level of sacred protection from violence.  A typical example would be in 1Samuel 26 where Saul’s life in David’s power.  David’s companion, Abishai councils David to kill Saul implying God’s will in setting favorable conditions.  David replies,

‘Do not kill him, for who can lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be without guilt? As the Lord lives,’ David said ‘the Lord himself will strike him down, whether his time to die comes, or he goes out to battle and perishes then. The Lord forbid that I should raise my hand against the Lord’s anointed! 

   

Unction implies kingship and the infirmed body becomes a sign of the reverence that springs from inversal unity, where the weakest are treated with the greatest reverence.  The kingship of the anointed invests that body with a sacred reverence and reminds us that the dying are not disposable.  Not only are they not disposable, but the dying are also worthy of dignity and reverence due to a monarch.  This dignity springs from their basic human dignity as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.  But in a society that demands efficiency and productivity, we can also say that this dignity further comes from the benefit of the dying’s signifying roles as priest and prophet.

  

Signifying Prophecy in Sickness and Death

It is only with the dignity of kingship that those who are still strong and healthy can begin to see the role of prophet in the one who is debilitated and/or dying.  The injunction of protection for anointed kings extends to anointed prophets in Psalm 105, “He let no one oppress them; for their sake, he rebuked kings: “Do not touch my anointed ones, do my prophets do no harm.”  The nature of the dying prophet is urgent and fundamental.  It strikes at the very core of what it means to be human.  Pope Francis surmises the prophetic message of infirmity in his Message for the XXIX World Day of the Sick

The experience of sickness makes us realize our own vulnerability and our innate need of others. It makes us feel all the more clearly that we are creatures dependent on God. When we are ill, fear and even bewilderment can grip our minds and hearts; we find ourselves powerless, since our health does not depend on our abilities or life’s incessant worries (cf. Mt 6:27).  Sickness raises the question of life’s meaning, which we bring before God in faith. In seeking a new and deeper direction in our lives, we may not find an immediate answer. 

   

The Apostles asked this question of Christ in John 9, “why?”  “Why was this man born blind?”  This is a fundamental struggle with suffering in the world.  It is a question that we would much rather ignore, especially concerning infirmity linked to mortality.  “Why sickness?  Why death?, Why sickness that leads to death?”

Again, Jesus’ answer to the apostles’ morally charged inquiry was to take the suffering of illness out of the realm of sin and punishment.  But one cannot understand suffering and death as simply the working of a Karmic system of rewards and punishments.  This is not to say that there are no consequences for our actions.  Genesis most certainly demonstrates that suffering and death are the result of the Fall.  But one need not see them as vindictive. To understand Jesus Christ, and his manner of suffering and death, the disciple must understand that there is purpose and meaning in suffering and death for one possessed of beatitude.  Christ’s answer to the inquiry about the man born blind is off putting for one who is experiencing suffering, “Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” First, Christ’s answer invests the infirmed with the same respect that the royal anointing does.  One cannot regard an infirmed or dying as cursed. Christ teaches this by his answer in John 9 and by his own suffering and death. 

Beyond simply a vindictive God, Jesus implies corporeal signification in suffering that communicates not just theodicy, but glory through infirmity and (by his passion) death.  That is to say, the body of the infirmed communicates and affects the glory of God.  The conveyance is completed by the ultimate healing by Christ.  But the infirmity itself is part and parcel of the message.  This is the prophetic role which the infirmed and dying are given upon their anointing.  A prophet is one who calls the community back to good relationship with God.  In our initiation into Christianity, we present our prophetic role with our bodies in the sacrifices we make through works of charity.  In mortal infirmity, we may or may not be able to do corporeal or even spiritual works of mercy.  Our abilities will depend on the nature of the illness.  Thus the sacrament gives a prophetic investment ex opere operato. Your body will be a prophetic sacramental sign for the community independent of your abilities.  

What are mortal infirmity and mortality a sign of?  What is the prophecy of death calling us to?  First, the healing of the blind man calls us to hope in healing.  This healing could be physical, spiritual, or social.  In the story, Christ heals, and it is made clear that he heals uniquely. “It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.”  When considering the prophetic office, any healing that comes from Unction is calibrated toward the community.  

The anointed infirmed is a sacramental sign that calls to the community in a variety of ways.  If they are physically healed, as in the parable, then it is a sign of mercy, of grace, or all the glory indicated in John chapter 9.  If the person is healed “in disposition” and is able to relate that to the community, then they are a sign of a disposition that we should all have, even if we are not mortally physically ill.  The truth is we are all infirmed in postlapsarian reality.  The disposition of one who has well prepared for death is the disposition that we all need in life.  This would include the virtues of gratitude, detachment, and our properly ordered love of self [body, mind, and soul], acceptance of God’s will, recognition of God’s providence etc.  We are all on our way to the same condition, thus their anointing is a sign to us, a call to awareness of proper thanatosian piety.  This prophetic call is effective ex opere operato.  Even if the infirmed is comatose from the point of Unction till their transitus, their body still conveys corporeal signification.  Their being still reverberates the prophetic call to the community.  In this case, it is a call to thanatosian piety.

As we discussed in the treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety there are certain helpful dispositions that contemplation of death helps even the healthy and vibrant Christian attain.  Death is a great motivator to wake us up from stupors that life can lull us with.  It motivates us to be good people out of fear of judgment, but also to enjoy life and not take our experience for granted.  In that treatise we reminded the reader that death comes to each of us like a thief in the night, thus regular contemplation will help the presence of death do its proper job in postlapsarian existence.  But we can now add to that the sign of the anointed body in our midst to recall us to this practice.

The second sign for us is one of humility, “there but for the grace of God go I”.  This is the sign of humility.  The body of the anointed becomes a sign of the fate of us all, whether sudden or protracted, whether a conscious experience or an oblivious experience, we are all on a trajectory to helpless dissolution.  This allows us to calibrate our attitude toward the skills and gifts that we have.  They are not our own, but are properly God’s, loaned to us to bring him glory.  To see the sick and dying bereft of their autonomy and “power” signifies to us, calls to us, the true powerlessness we abide in, and the illusion of control and autonomy we visit upon ourselves.  

Lastly, the prophetic call of the anointed in infirmity concerns investment in their baptismal priesthood.  In the next part, we will explore the nature and modes of this priesthood as it concerns sickness and death, but, suffice to say, we are called as baptismal priests to be exercising these exact modes expressly because the condition of the infirmed and the dying is our condition as well.  The skills and maneuvers available to the dissolving and dying priest are available to us even at what we perceive as the height of our health and vigor, because even then we are in the process of life, a process of dissolution and death.  The bodies of the prophetic dying are a sign calling us to act now concerning our use of our suffering and death for the redemption of our fellow members of the Body of Christ.  In as much as we listen and recalibrate ourselves and our society to heed this call, the dying through their prophecy become kings, ordering society toward existence as a community of priests.

Signifying Priesthood in Sickness and Death

         

That redemptive suffering brings us to the last aspect of anointing, the anointed as a sign of a priest.  In the previous section, we discussed the role of Unction in the sacrificial economy.  The perilous nature of one near death may not allow them, as baptismal priests, to liturgically function, thus Unction offers direct ability to act in that capacity absent difficult geo-specific requirements.  Now we can turn to exactly how the infirmed and dying can specifically exercise their priesthood. 

In the treatise The Manifold Priesthood of the Catholic Church we discussed the two functions of the priest in the alienating environment of postlapsarian reality.  Those functions are mediation and sacrifice.  That is to say, the priest significantly presents God to their neighbors, and the priest communicates with God via calculated ritual, particularly sacrifice.  The role of mediation is similar to the role of prophet, except that what is being mediated is not simply a message, it is the divine presence that is mediated.  The baptismal priest has the ability to mediate Christ as an alter christus and as one who is dying mediates, they are specifically mediating the paschal mystery.  Again as the catechism says, “freely uniting themselves to the passion and death of Christ," "contribute to the good of the People of God.”  That union is priestly and therefore significant.  They are anointed in order to use their death as a means of mediation, through corporeal signification, of Christ’s own death.  As the community experiences their death, the sorrow they feel is now a tool of investment in the passion.  Any hesitancy about the ability of God to save is now addressed by the anointed’s union with Christ, who offers the hope of salvation to all.  When Jesus was executed, his appearance was one who was cursed, by uniting with him, any accusation of curse on the anointed is put into doubt.  After Unction, the anointed is a sign of the suffering servant at the height of his ministry.  This is the most impactful mediation of the baptismal priest through Unction.

Regarding Unction and the sacrificial nature of priesthood, we discussed in the treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety the natural connection between death and sacrifice.  We discussed the sacrifice of pride it takes to yield to dissolution and the complete nature of a death as a means of sacrifice.  Death is believed to be a complete elimination of control, dominion, maybe even existence, except by the grace of God.  This is why it is such a fitting sacrifice, but also why it is a sacrifice so hard to pull off.  But the simple fact is that we will all face this reality.  The existence of the Sacrament of Unction sanctifies this reality for us and is a constant reminder of our call to utilize this unavoidable experience.  In as much as the dying can consciously internalize their experience, they can consciously make this sacrifice.  But depending on the circumstances, they may not be able to consciously do this.  Thus the sign of the sacrifice is effective for the rest of the community.  We see the process of sickness and death, and therefore we can prepare ourselves while still able.  This is the meritorious effect of the sacrifice for others, to be a sign of the future and its good use.  If the sign is effective and we can “pre-game” our sacrificial intentions, it lends credence to the ex opere operato nature of a comatose infirmed dying and anointed.  Unction is not a “point” but a fulfillment, just as death is not a point, but a fulfillment.  “It is accomplished”.

The constant presence of Unction in a community will awaken the living to a constant need to prepare to use their illnesses and death as a means of mediation and sacrifice, as well as offer it as an act of arrogation for the community.  In this, we prepare ourselves according to the four modalities of christo-analogical interchange.  The dual nature of presentation, which requires a “presenter” and a “presented to”, and in this case, the roles are played by the anointed infirmed and the community.  Again, there are four possibilities, two offering first person presentations of Christ and two offering second person presentations. The relationship assumes some sort of help is being offered and the modalities work to “Christ as the helper”, “Christ as the helped”, “the helper of Christ '' and finally“helped by Christ”.  The “help” in this case is a significant demonstration of the meaning, nature, and utility of the dying experience.  As the Catechism states concerning Unction

It completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life: that of Baptism which sealed the new life in us, and that of Confirmation which strengthened us for the combat of this life. This last anointing fortifies the end of our earthly life like a solid rampart for the final struggles before entering the Father's house    

Part of this struggle is the very signification we are discussing.  To let go is a struggle and we need fortitude.  It will not likely go perfectly.  So the last signification offered by the dying is postlapsarian perfection, or what we called in The Spiritual Sacrifice of the Incarnation, perfect striving.  Perfect striving is the perfection available to humans in postlapsarian reality according to Thomas Aquinas’ third variety of perfection.  In this perfection, we have neither perfect will, perfect desire, nor perfect knowledge, or even perfect action.  This perfection relies completely “on the part of the lover as regards the removal of obstacles to the movement of love.”  Thus one may not “handle” their infirmity perfectly at every moment of the way.  They may cry out to God, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, but in this they are struggling and offering a sign of God’s mercy to us in our most vulnerable moments.  

This life is a struggle to relinquish our sense of self, to die to self, and live for God.  Ultimately God will call us to account, and we will not be ready.  Our imperfect situation is the situation that Christ came to be with us.  In Unction, we can be there for each other in this same way, both the infirmed and the community as mutual priests, prophets, and kings.  Each member is offering their experience and sanctifying each other bound in the Holy Spirit and operating in the grace of the sacraments.  

In this section, we unpacked the three roles of anointing, priest, prophet, and king, as they relate to the Anointing of the Sick. We saw that the anointing of Kingship is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as a relationship of respect and dignity.  The anointing of prophet is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as a call or proclamation.  The anointing of priesthood is the signification and acceptance between the infirmed and the community as an effect of mediation and sacrifice.  

Conclusion

The purpose of this treatise was to explore the effective grace of the Anointing of the Sick, especially concerning corporeal signification of the infirmed. The hope was to offer engagement skills for the infirmed, those aiding them, and the entire church who are praying with them.   We sought to expand how the experience of Unction is perceived, moving the perception from one of a sacrament aimed at the solitary experience of a dying person, to a fully developed experience of the sacrament in its ecclesiological function.

As I write this work, the world is experiencing the fourth wave of the covid pandemic.  Hospitals are filled with the infirmed and dying.  The rest of the world, especially the US, would like to continue on, running the economic engine as efficiently as possible and hope this tragedy can pass with minimal effect.  That is to say, pass without us having to face the reality of the dying priest, prophet, and king, who has much to communicate to us and sanctification to offer.  The dying are shut in wards as ordained priests  bravely sortie in and anoint them to offer strength.  But there is an equal if not greater grace on offer than the grace given to the church dying, it is the grace the dying give to the church.