The Mystery of Anointing

Holy Unction is the Church’s mystery of healing, given on the plain command of the Epistle of James: the sick are anointed with oil and prayed over by the elders, that they may be raised up and their sins forgiven. This file treats the Scriptural foundation in James 5:14–15, the healing of soul and body that the mystery seeks, the forgiveness of sins joined to that healing, and the important correction that Orthodox unction is not “extreme unction” or “last rites.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Command of James

Holy Unction rests on one of the clearest sacramental texts in the New Testament. “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him” (James 5:14–15). Nearly every element of the mystery is already present in these two verses: the sick person, the elders (presbyteroi) of the Church who are its ministers, the anointing with oil “in the name of the Lord,” the prayer of faith, the raising up, and the forgiveness of sins (Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick, SVS Press, 2009, on James 5 as the foundation; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, Part II). Behind James lies the practice of the Lord’s own disciples, who “anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (Mark 6:13), and behind that the whole Gospel ministry of Christ the healer. The Church’s mystery of anointing is thus the continuation, in every age, of Christ’s healing of the sick.

The Healing of Soul and Body

The distinctive breadth of Orthodox unction is that it seeks the healing of the whole person — soul and body together — and does not separate the two. The prayers of the rite ask directly for bodily recovery: that God “heal Thy servant from the infirmity of body and soul that holdeth him”; and they ask no less for the healing of the soul from sin and passion (the prayers of the Euchelaion; see Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick, on the content of the prayers). The Orthodox tradition does not reduce the mystery to a spiritual comfort indifferent to the body, nor to a merely physical cure indifferent to the soul; it holds, in keeping with its whole anthropology, that the human person is a single psychosomatic unity, and that the salvation Christ brings is the healing of the whole (Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick; see Orthodoxy: Holy Unction).

This means the mystery is realistic about its effects without being magical. The “prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” — and the Church prays in real hope for bodily healing, and testifies that such healing is granted. But the raising up James promises is finally the raising up unto salvation, and the mystery is not a guaranteed cure that fails if the sick person dies. Where God grants bodily recovery, unction is a means of it; where He does not, the mystery still accomplishes its deeper work — the healing of the soul, the forgiveness of sins, the strengthening of the sufferer to bear illness in union with the suffering Christ, and the preparation of the person, whether for renewed life or for a Christian end (Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick, on the several dimensions of the mystery’s effect; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II). The mystery submits the sick person, in faith, to the will of God for his true good, which the Church does not presume to dictate.

The Forgiveness of Sins

James joins to the healing an explicit promise of forgiveness: “if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him” (James 5:15). This forgiving dimension is integral to Orthodox unction and follows from its theology of the unity of soul and body: because sin and sickness are connected in the fallen human condition — not that each particular illness is punishment for a particular sin, which the Lord denies (John 9:2–3), but that the whole reign of sickness and death entered with sin — the healing of the body and the forgiveness of sins belong together in the one work of restoration (Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick, on the forgiveness of sins in unction). For this reason unction has long been associated with the forgiveness even of sins forgotten or unconfessed, and in some traditions with the completion of repentance; it is closely allied to the mystery of confession without replacing it (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II; see The Mystery of Repentance).

Not “Last Rites”

[Corrected: the common assumption that unction is a rite for the dying — "extreme unction" or "last rites." In the medieval and modern Roman Catholic tradition the anointing of the sick came to be called *extrema unctio*, the "last anointing," and was administered chiefly to those in danger of death as the final sacrament preparing the soul for its passage — so that in popular perception the anointing became a sign that death was near. The Orthodox Church never made this restriction. Orthodox Holy Unction is administered to the sick as such — to any of the faithful suffering illness of body or soul, at any stage, and not only or especially to the dying — and its prayers ask for recovery and return to health, not for a peaceful death (Paul Meyendorff, *The Anointing of the Sick*, SVS Press, 2009, on the difference from the Western "extreme unction" and the recovery of the sacrament of the sick; Ware, *The Orthodox Church*, Part II). Rome itself, at the Second Vatican Council, revised its teaching and practice in this direction, renaming the sacrament the "Anointing of the Sick" and directing that it be given at the onset of serious illness rather than reserved for the point of death — a reform that brings Western practice closer to the Eastern understanding the Orthodox had never abandoned. It is therefore an error, though a widespread one, to identify Orthodox unction with "last rites."]

The practical corollary is that Orthodox Christians may and do receive unction whenever seriously ill, and that in most Orthodox Churches the whole congregation receives it once a year in the general unction of Holy Week (see The Rite of the Seven Priests). The mystery is one of Christian life and healing, not of Christian dying — though, like every mystery, it also prepares the person for the ultimate healing that is the resurrection.

The Oil of Gladness and Mercy

The matter of the mystery is olive oil, blessed in the course of the rite (in some uses mingled with wine, in memory of the Good Samaritan who poured oil and wine into the wounds of the man fallen among thieves, Luke 10:34). Oil is throughout Scripture a sign of God’s mercy, gladness, and healing — the oil that soothes wounds, that gladdens the face (Psalm 104:15), that anoints for blessing. In unction the oil, sanctified by the Church’s prayer and the invocation of the Spirit, becomes the vehicle of Christ’s own healing touch, so that the anointing of the sick person’s body is the anointing of the whole person with the mercy of God (Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick, on the symbolism of the oil; see Sacramental Theology, on the material element sanctified by the Spirit). The Greek name of the mystery, Euchelaion — from euchē, “prayer,” and elaion, “oil,” with a play on eleos, “mercy” — gathers the whole meaning: it is the oil of prayer and of mercy for the healing of soul and body.

References

Paul Meyendorff. The Anointing of the Sick. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009.
Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993, Part II.
Scripture: James 5:14–15; Mark 6:13; Luke 10:34; John 9:2–3; Psalm 104:15.