|
Volume 35, Number 4 |
Richardton, ND 58652 |
October 2007 |
A Reflection on the Annointing of the Sick
Fr. Julian Nix, O.S.B.
I attended a workshop entitled “The Experience of Being Chronically Ill.” The predominant experience for these patients is loneliness, being cut off from family and community, and the patient’s efforts to find love and friendship.
This is the same experience for anyone who is ill. The more acute the illness the stronger the sense of isolation. We may have the same disease as others but we are sick by ourselves. That we suffer from disease is a sign of the lasting effects of the sin of our first parents, where the human race is alienated from God, each other, ourselves and from the physical world. After all, many diseases are caused by viruses, bacteria and other organisms, as well as genetic defects, accidents and violence.
How then are we to experience healing? What can restore us to hope and wholeness? Modern medicine offers a lot, but it has its limits. Often they are reached very quickly. Healing occurs when we can integrate suffering into the meaning and context of our lives.
The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick can give us this meaning and context and an experience of reintegration and restoration of our lives. In the Sacrament, as in all the Sacraments, the Paschal Mystery is made present to restore us in Christ. Our illness is united to Christ and his suffering. This union offers us hope because the suffering of Christ was a very human experience. Jesus experienced not only physical pain but also human alienation and isolation.
Christ experienced every dimension of human suffering and reacted in very human ways. First we try to deny or escape what confronts us and bargain with God: “Father, let this cup pass from me.” After some struggle we acknowledge our powerlessness: “Not my will but thine be done.” We can lose our network of social support, after all who wants to be around sick people: “Can you not watch one hour with me?” Even the consolations of God can be absent: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But in this struggle with our mortality we begin to be transformed. We accept
the realities of our illness and its physical toll on us. “I thirst.” We reorder
the priorities of life, turning to reconciliation and compassion: “Father, forgive
them.” “Son, behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.” And finally, the surrender
of self-
In the sacrament of anointing not only is Christ’s participation in human suffering made present, but also our participation in the divine healing and restoration of the Resurrection becomes a reality. Christ who bore our infirmities and endured our suffering unites with us and raises us up to the Father’s presence, as we pray in the sacramental formula. Our isolation and alienation are overcome through Christ’s presence and the presence of the Church.
St. Benedict in his chapter on the care of the sick presents the community acting as Christ to make Christ’s actions concrete. “All care must be given the sick.” The conditions of the last judgment are fulfilled: “When did we see you ill, or imprisoned, or hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or homeless?” “When you served my least ones.” The powerful must serve the powerless; the healthy the sick to make Christ’s love a reality.
Through the sacrament Christ who raised our mortal nature to perfection enters our lives and makes our infirmities his own, and transforms us into himself to make us one in God. In the sacrament we are anointed with the salve of Christ’s healing and salvation that we may be cured, sometimes; healed, always; but abandoned, never.
As November approaches, the month customarily given over to rememberance of the deceased, we remember the infirm among us and those who have already crossed over.
DEVELOPMENT OFFICE
Br. Michael Taffe, O.S.B.
