Based on our reading of the entire book, show how one specific sacrament is an invitation to deeper union with Christ.
As a person battling a chronic illness for nearly seven years, I am quite familiar with different ways in which people seek healing from God through the Church, having participated in many of them. While these experiences all called for presenting myself before God for healing, which is an act of humble surrender, the anointing of the sick was radically different; it not only involved an inward plea for any kind of healing God willed, but it also involved an invitation to deeper union with Christ.
All of the Church’s sacraments call forth greater co-mingling with Christ. It is through this union that we can fulfill our calling, our very reason for being, to return to God to share in His divine life. While we were made for this reditus, or return to God, the Fall dims our image of the Trinity, impedes our ability to follow God’s will, and bars our entrance into the heavenly sanctuary. We are simply not fit to share in God’s life. Like the villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the ghosts in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce, we could not withstand it in our sinful state. To do so, “[we] must be brought back into the presence of God, filled with HIs life, conformed to the heavenly Pattern” (9). This is exactly what Jesus Christ does for us: he leads human beings back into correct relationship with God by impressing the pattern of submission to divine will on us and paying the penalty for our sins through His life and particularly through his suffering and death. In being united with Christ (who unites God and humanity in his very self) through the gift of God’s grace, we are able to take up these gifts from Christ and return to the Blessed Trinity and share in the divine life. While Jesus ascended to heaven nearly 2000 years ago, His body remains in a new form, a new extension, in the Church. It is here, in the Church, that “we must seek for and unite ourselves to Christ our Savior” (293). Not only do the members of the Church constitute the body of Christ, which is both God and human, but the Church is also “in intimate contact with the life-giving humanity of the risen Christ” (294) which has become the instrument through which the grace-giving Spirit is sent to individuals on earth, particularly in the sacraments. The sacraments are Christ’s chosen way “for giving the effect of the dispositions of his human will” (56) and “by which [people] of succeeding ages are incorporated into the unique mystery of Christ, into his supreme act of worship” (59). Christ chose the sacraments to unite people to himself – to lead humans back into the presence of God, filling them with His life, and conforming them to the heavenly pattern of submission to divine will, which makes their lives an offering back to God, a reditus, an act of worship.
While many sacraments are celebrated in joy, the anointing of the sick is not one of them. The sacrament itself remains a mystery or misunderstood by many Catholics who think of it as “the sacrament of the dying.” Although it is not surrounded by celebration, the anointing of the sick can usher in peace, hope, and strengthened faith, which are worth praise. As with any sacrament, it invites one to be united more deeply with Christ. And as with all sacraments, “its purpose is to promote Christian life at the same time as healing the wounds of sin” (283), a healing that leads to a more profound intimacy with God. Here “healing” takes on a more poignant role as we ask Jesus Christ, who healed the sick during his earthly life, to heal us. This is why the material used for the sacrament is consecrated oil, oil having been a medicinal substance in the past. The shape of the sacramental ritual performed determines the fashion in which Christ presents himself. The rite of the anointing of the sick allows for many variations within its celebration (including where to actually anoint a body) based on the specific circumstances of the sick person, responding pastorally to the individual just as Christ varied his own healings from words from far away as with the centurion’s servant to rubbing mud and spit in the blind man’s eyes. However, it is important to remember that the anointing invites one to deeper life with Christ primarily through healing the wounds of sin; restoring bodily health by sacrament is relegated to a secondary place.
Still, O’Neill reminds us that “physical sickness is itself an effect of sin” (283), acknowledging that illness and death are real and wrong. Jesus did not want to die, he sent his disciples to heal bodily illness, and the resurrection of his body shows that both body and spirit matter. In sacramental anointing, the Church recognizes the difficulty borne by the sick and dying; however, it also recognizes that baptism has incorporated us to the body of Christ, which suffered despite grace, and suffering like Christ can be “a period of preparation during which the Christian becomes like Christ” (274), which allows him or her to be more united with him. While according to O’Neill, “Suffering and death are a punishment that must be borne by the human race; and this is the primary sense that they have for the Christian” (277), the second sense is for the person’s growth in reliance on God; sometimes “Divine Providence uses shock tactics, leaving an individual with only one source of happiness” (279).
Whether or not one agrees with O’Neill’s assessment of suffering, God can use anything, including that which He did not cause, for good and to invite one to rely more on Him, conforming to Christ. However, suffering can cause depression that makes it difficult to be Christ-like, exhausts the virtues, and can call up a tendency to revolt against the will of God. This is where the anointing of the sick intervenes. According to St. Thomas and the Council of Trent, the sacrament absolves any sin (if any remains), removes the after-effect of sin (particularly trouble seeing suffering as a means to conform to Christ, temptation to despair, and trouble performing virtue), and lightens the spirit of the person by strengthening his or her resolve and stirring up love for God. It better enables one to join his or her suffering with Christ, growing in union with him. As a sacrament of the Church, anointing allows one to incorporate suffering into the life of the Church, and “union with God, while utterly personal, is at the same time achieved only as a member of a community” (297). In taking on pain, the Church is more Christ-like and a more perfect sacrament in the world.
By now it should be clear that the anointing of the sick is not reserved for the dying. However, anointing at death (often referred to as Viaticum), matters in a particular way. It is an act of worship, offering oneself back to God during one’s final moments, by accepting suffering and death in conformity with Christ’s disposition of submission to God’s will. Even facing death,in the ending of earthly life, the anointed is in loving union with Christ who said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:20b).