Holy Unction
Catholic Customs 6: Holy Unction
The Sacrament of Holy Unction, or Anointing with Oil, derives from the instruction in the Letter of James in the New Testament. ‘Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord’ (James 5.14) From the earliest Church this practice of anointing with oil for healing, coupled with prayer, has been practised and came to be recognised as a sacrament. It gets its name from the Latin word ‘Unctio’, meaning ‘to anoint’.
During the Middle Ages, the sacrament became reduced to anointing before death when it was called Extreme Unction, or unction ‘in extremis’, the extreme experience of dying and death. It became part of the Last Rites that the Church could offer to a Christian facing the last great trial of death. It is still part of those Last Rites, along with Confession, Holy Communion, and Prayer to help a Christian prepare for their death and face the judgement of God. As such, it has been the privilege of your parish priest to administer the sacrament of Holy Unction to the dying in this parish and in other parishes before this.
However, reducing Holy Unction only to Extreme Unction is a misunderstanding of what the Letter of James is urging. First and foremost it is a sacrament of healing. It uses holy oil which has been blessed by the bishop at the annual Chrism Mass where the bishop, accompanied by his/her priests, blesses the holy oils to be used that year in baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Unction. These are then brought back by the priests to their parishes. In this parish they are kept in the Holy Oil Safe which is on the north wall of the church, just past where the organ is.
As a sacrament Holy Unction is something we can rely on as a vehicle of God’s grace. As the prayerbook says, a sacrament is ‘an outward and spiritual sign of in inward and spiritual grace, given us by Christ himself, as a means by which we receive that grace, and a pledge to assure us of this.’ It is a dependable means of grace from God. In the instance of this sacrament, given not by Jesus himself but emerging later in ongoing life of the Church by the of the Holy Spirit who has guided the Church since Christ’s ascension, as he promised (Jn.16.13).
As a sacrament of healing Holy Unction is one of the Church’s sacraments, like the sacrament of Reconciliation) that we will need a number of times in our life. This is because we all suffer from time to time the various ailments our physical bodies are subject to. Unlike baptism it is not a once-for-all sacrament, but one we turn to repeatedly, as a way of turning to the help and life-giving grace of God on whom we depend and follow through Jesus our Lord.
As Catholic Anglicans I hope you will follow the advice of St James in his New Testament letter; and when you are seriously ill you will ask your priest to be anointed with oil in the name of the Lord for healing, a healing that may be either physical or spiritual, or both, depending on our circumstances and on the will of God whose will we pray be done.
The administration of the Sacrament of Holy Unction can be done in a number of ways. It can be administered privately, either in the Lady Chapel after mass (perhaps accompanied by Christian friends), or at home or in the hospital if you are facing an operation. Or it can be administered during mass on Sunday, or at the mid-week mass, so that prayer for healing of the whole church might be associated with the sacrament. Being anointed at mass also means that you receive the grace of this sacrament along with the great grace of the sacrament of our Lord’s real presence in his body and blood in the Eucharist.
It is a very simple sacrament. The priest anoints you with oil in the sign of the cross, and hands are laid upon you with prayer for healing.
It may be that we are reluctant to accept this sacrament because we ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ or to draw undue attention to ourselves. However, using the sacrament of healing is not about ourselves, it is about God. It is about God’s care and love for us being administered through the sacraments of the Church. It is about us turning to God in our need and asking that his will be done for us in times of illness. It is about practising our Christian faith and reliance upon God during our illnesses, in the same way that we do when we are well.
Father Rowan
May 2022