Illness and Caring for the Sick - #7

People ask astute questions about the anointing of the sick.

1. Who can receive the sacrament? Those with serious illness and those preparing for surgery are subjects for anointing. A person may be anointed again if an illness worsens. Some people with physical disabilities and significant emotional illness are subjects for anointing. (However, living with disability and emotional illness does not automatically mean that a person is seriously ill.) The elderly who are frail or weak, especially when they are confined to their homes or institutions, are subjects for anointing. (However, old age does not automatically make someone eligible for anointing. Many older people enjoy robust health, lead active and productive lives, and creatively contribute to the church and society. They would be affronted to learn that old age, a normal stage of life, classifies them as being ill.) In short, people will recognize some illnesses as self-evidently serious. In other cases, we have to trust the wholesome judgment of persons who present themselves as subjects desiring the sacrament.

2. Who should not receive the sacrament? Anointing should not be indiscriminately offered to everyone. People such as those seeking inner healing, or reconciling past hurts and abuses, or living with the usual distress and anxiety of a complex society, or fretting over their health can seek a variety of spiritual pathways to meet these needs. The sacrament is not preventive medicine, a spiritual safeguard against ordinary illness. Pastoral agents are chary of inviting everyone to come forward for this sacrament. Priests and lay ministers need delicacy, sensitivity, and diplomacy when dealing with human vulnerability, pain and the fear of illness. We should not lay too heavy a load on the shoulders of this ritual prayer. As the Benedictine liturgical theologian Jennifer Glen put it "Rites that attempt to include every meaning risk losing all meaning (in P. Fink, ed. Alternate Futures for Worship: Anointing of the Sick (Vol. 7), p. 60).

3. Who should join the sick when this sacrament is celebrated? The sick belong to two circles of life. Each circle should be invited to full, conscious, and active participation in the ritual prayer of anointing someone who is beloved to them. The first circle is that of immediate family and friends. These people are affected when a family member or dear friend is sick. When they gather for the public prayer of anointing, their home is a mini-church. Christ, the one who knew suffering, joins their household, brings blessing to the sick, and strengthens, supports, encourages, and consoles this mini-church through the Word of God, ritual action, and mutual prayer. The second circle is that of the people of the parish. Sickness keeps the sick from being part of the Sunday assembly and its celebration of the Eucharist. When sickness deprives people from participating in the Sunday gathering, other members of the assembly keenly feel their absence. The church is diminished and the body of Christ is weakened. The assembly misses people who they are used to being with and praying with week after week. When the sick are brought to communal celebrations of the anointing, the rest of the assembly rejoices in their presence, helps the sick in bearing the burden, and fervently prays for their well being.