1.- Let’s begin considering some questions about the unction of the sick: Is it a sacrament? Is it a rite that provokes repulsion? Is it a magic act? Do we leave it for the end? Is it a sacrament for the old people? Is it a Christ presence signal in the illness? How deep does the Christian community participate?
2.- It a hard and anguished situation. To get sick is to join a different world. Hostile elements (fatigue, fever, blunting, pain) invade our body. The sick person feels his being’s fragility, that so far he believed firm and sure. The illness menaces to destroy all we have and all we are.
3.- The illness obliges the sick to lend himself an exclusive attention. His horizon gets narrower. Perhaps only some movements, some gestures are possible for him. At last, he must be helped to eat, to change clothes, to satisfy his most peremptory needs. He is in a situation of dependency. All this changes his relationship with the other people. He suffers feeling himself perhaps like a burden. Or because he cannot share what he is experiencing: When one pays me a visit he talks emptily (Ps 41,7). The illness extension may create the spacing of the visits.
4.- The illness provokes diverse reaction and questions to the sick, who desires to find a reason of what is happening to him, but that have no easy answer: Why does this happen to me? Why this illness? What have I done to deserve this? Where is God’s justice? In his confusion temptation, rebellion against God may arise, a reaction questioning life’s meaning: Why didn’t I die at birth? (Job 3,11). Sick´s reactions are an ease for him. A sheltering and understanding attitude is required.
5.- The believer may ask himself: What does God say about my illness? What is he doing with it? There are not easy answers, really. Because of that, it is necessary to pray. The sane relationship with God, especially before illness and death, requires a constant purification. We easily project our fears, desires, thoughts. And we do not establish a relationship with Him such as he is (Jb 42,7. 13-17). It is really better to ignore than to risk false answers.
6.- It is necessary to confront illness medically. It is a question of common sense: Then consult the doctor, you need him (Sir 38,12). Illness is an evil; it is bad to be bad. Because of this, Jesus went about healing (Acts 10,38). It is not necessarily a God’s punishment, like Job’s friends believe (Jb 5, 17-18). It is something inherent to human condition: Seventy years to our life or eighty if we are strong (Ps 90,10).
7.- The evangels show Jesus attention to the sick. He not only teaches, but heals: Jesus went all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing all kinds of sickness and disease among the people (Mt 4,23). The disciples are sent to do the same: Go and proclaim the message: the kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, cleanse the lepers and drive out the demons (Mt 10,7-8). The disciples healed many sick people by anointing them. (Mc 6,13). It is precise to fight sickness. Healing (ordinary or extraordinary) made by Jesus are God´s kingdom signals present between us. They are not rites they are healing signals. Sickness does not disappear from the world, but God´s strength is already in action and at the end it will win.
8.- The Church always carried out the unction of the sick. In the letter of James we can read: If any one is sick, let him call on the elders of the Church. They shall pray for him anointing him with oil in the name f the Lord. The prayer said in faith will save the sick person; the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven. (James 5, 14-15). The prayer of faith is the prayer made with faith, that excludes any magic and it means an alive relationship with the Lord. What is important is the fervent prayer, id est, assiduous. It is said that, if practiced like that, it has great power (5,16). In illness everything comes out in the open: old hates, unsolved problems. In one or another way a true reconciliation may take place.
9.- It is not easy to get into the world of the sick person. It is necessary to proceed with caution. Like the Levite and the priest, before the wounded man found in the way, there is someone that passes by on the other side, he looks to another place, he is in a hurry. But the Samaritan stopped, found out what he needed, treated his wounds with oil and wine and wrapped them with bandages. Then he put him on his own animal, and brought to an inn where he took care of him. The good Samaritan parable (Lk 10, 29-37) shows how somebody without any kind of religious title may really accomplish the Gospel.
10.- Illness may provoke crisis in the family, that can either divide it or help it to grow in unity and solidarity. The sick can not be will neither understood nor attended without his family, that becomes irreplaceable. It is necessary to appreciate the family’s roll and to promote the adequate help so that it can overcome the illness crisis.
11.- The symbolism of the unction (the oil that heals the wounds) is a fraternal gesture of assistance and cure. It expresses the Christian community solitude towards the suffering brother. It reveals Christ’s behaviour that takes on our disease (Mt 8,17). The sacrament refers to the community and manifests Lord’s active presence in the illness. In His name the disciples will lay hands on the sick and the sick will be healed (Mk 16,18). The unction, says the Council, “is not a sacrament only for those who are about to die”, but for those who are “in danger of death because of illness or oldness” (SC 73).
12.- Like any other sacrament, the unction of the sick has a communitarian dimension. The illness of one of his members presents to the Christian community a good opportunity to show its fraternal love. During the illness, the ties relating each other, not only are not broken, but they acquire a new dimension. Like says Saint Paul: When one suffers, all of them suffer (1 Cor 12,26). The community must be Bethesda pool in the middle of the society (Jn 5), id est, community that heals.
13.- The unction of the sick should not be an isolated fact, a short Lord’s visit. Every thing is important (first symptoms, analyse, diagnosis, treatment), all can be placed in the prayer context that goes with the fight against the illness. The prayer involves the action. Spiritual and material aspects go hand by hand. Health service acquires a sacramental value that begins with the humanitarian gestures of welcome when entering in the hospital and continues with the diverse services rendered to the sick. Christ love to the sick is shown through the medical treatment, the brothers´ visits and the prayer. The Lord waits for us in the sick, he identifies himself with him: I was sick and you went to see me (Mt 25,36).
14.- Like the Council says, “with the unction of the sick and the prayer of the presbyters, the whole church recommends them to the patient and glorious Lord, so He may help and save them (LC 11). In this manner, the sick person is the attention centre of all the community and he is contemplated like the Christ presence’s sign and also a sign of the fight He undertakes against illness and death. The community shall penetrate the seek with the feeling that he is not a burden, that he is not an unsuccessful person, that he is not alone, that he is not going towards the emptiness, that God has the last word, and that there is nothing that could separate him from God´s love. (Rom 8,31-35).
15.- “When a person gets gravely sick needs a special God´s grace, so that, when dominated by the anguish, his spirit does not collapse, and when submitted to probation, his faith does not decay” (RU 5). With the unction, the pain before sickness and death becomes human, id est, full of hope. The illness losses its hardest character, desperate and afflictive. Like the death, it loses its sting (1Co 15,55) to become a sign of peace, serenity and hope. The believer sick evangelises from his patient situation.
* For personal and group reflection:
- The unction is a signal of Christ presence
- It has a communitarian dimension
- We participate in the healing mission
- We visit the sick persons
- The sick participate in the community life
- The sick evangelise. Present experiences.