HOLY UNCTION: ANOINTED WITH THE LOVE OF GOD

While Holy Unction is available at any time of the year, its position in Holy Week is significant.  Bridegroom Matins calls for vigilance as we approach the passion of Christ, that we not be found sleeping, as we prepare for the Resurrection.  Like the wise virgins, will our lamps be trimmed with oil, ready to meet the Bridegroom at the wedding feast?  After these services comes Holy Unction, which shows this sacrament to be an integral part of our preparation to receive the Risen Christ.

A story from the Evergetinos, an ancient collection of sayings from the Church Fathers, relates the story of a young hermit who had a recurring dream.  “I would walk out on a narrow stone bridge that spans a chasm and suddenly find that the bridge has vanished.  Although I don’t fall, I’m left suspended with no support and no ability to move to safety.  As I begin to panic, I hear a voice saying, ‘Look up.’  I look up and see a silvery rope coming down through the darkness.  I grab on and am pulled to safety.” This is the way we also should approach Holy Unction — with total reliance on Christ’s saving power, reaching out for that “rope” of grace. Our Orthodox faith tells us that Holy Unction punctuates the movement of our history, interrupts its natural ebb and flow, to send to us hope and healing, wholeness and comfort, and the ultimate forgiveness of our sins.

Physically present or not, Holy Unction defies the laws of nature to reach deeply into our hearts as we pray along with the holy ministers!  Holy Unction has the power of the Sacraments to suspend those natural forces with the intrusion of God’s providence. The healing power of God rules over all things and will be constrained or stopped by nothing, ever. It is the power of God at work! While it veils His essence, it nonetheless communicates His energy, as our holy father St. Gregory Palamas teaches us.

In Scripture and the Church’s teachings, the healing of soul is always included alongside the healing of the body. We see this in the James 5 passage, and also in today’s Gospel, when Christ first tells the paralytic, “your sins are forgiven” and after “take up your mat.”  The second prayer of Holy Unction asks, “O merciful Master…take up Your abode in these, Your servants, who acknowledge their iniquities, and draw near to You in faith…forgiving them…and cleanse them from every sin that I ought to be a pillar of spiritual strength.”  We see that the prayers of the Akathist are just as much about healing of the soul, and we reflect on Christ’s ministry of healing: “The sick sought physical healing, but Jesus gave them the healing they really needed—spiritual healing.”

These reflections help us define healing and what we seek from the sacrament of Holy Unction, but there is a responsibility that follows.  In Metropolitan +Anthony’s (Bloom) sermon on healing,  he says, “To be healed does not mean to become whole only in order to go back to the same kind of life that we lived before; it means to be whole in order to begin a new life. Are we capable of receiving healing?   Do we agree to take upon ourselves the responsibility of a new wholeness, in order to enter again, and yet again, into the world in which we live, with knowledge of our renewal; to be light, to be salt?”  The prayers of Holy Unction reiterate these responsibilities, that the healed person may “serve you with all thanksgiving,” “pleasing you and abiding in your will.”

The healing power of Holy Unction, therefore, gives us a taste of the Divine Kingdom to come. In his book Great Week and Pascha, the eminent Orthodox theologian Fr. Alkiviadis Calivas, writes, “The purpose of the sacrament is to allow the person to share in the victory of Christ and to raise him into the realm of God’s Kingdom… where suffering, corruption and death are overcome.” In the sacrament, the liturgist prays “that this Oil will be blessed by the descent, power, and operation of the Holy Spirit.”  The oil of Holy Unction, empowered by the Holy Spirit, heals not only the individual, but all of creation.  This grace is offered to us on Holy Wednesday – no matter where we are or how far apart we are.

His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Albania often refers to the “oil of religion” when he speaks of the brokenness and the ethnic and religious tensions in the Balkans.  “The oil of religion, “ he says, “is to heal the wounds and soften the hearts; to help people find hope, not to fuel hatred and violence.” So it is with us this Holy Wednesday. Whatever ails our bodies and souls, whatever calls out for healing in our hearts, whatever brokenness or anxiety, however much we may feel God remote from us these days, we take to our hearts words from the Book of Deuteronomy: “But the Lord, He is the one who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, so do not be afraid nor be terrified.” (Deut. 31:8)

Go to your heart this Holy Wednesday as we witness the service of Holy Unction from afar.  God will be there!  He will make you whole again – no matter how deep the wound or dark the sin.  God will be IN you during those moments, He will work His wonders in you, He will touch you in a mystic way with His love, His comfort, and His protection.  This is the grace of Holy Unction – a grace that comes to us even without the physical anointing because it comes to us from deep in the Divine Heart of God.  It is in that Heart that love pulses, loves moves the stubborn, love lifts the discouragement, and mends our searching souls.  It is the “oil of love” that comes to rest in our souls!  Worry not – your soul will find wholeness thanks to that love!  May the Divine Physician bring you the healing that you yearn for on Holy Wednesday and forevermore!

Faithfully in the Lord,

Fr. Dimitrios