Metropolitan Hilarion discusses the history and liturgical meaning of the mystery of holy unction. All the mysteries of the Church restore our humanness to the Holy Trinity. Oil has been an image of medicine, healing, compassion, forgiveness, food, anointing with the Spirit, and joy since the history of the Jewish people. The apostles received the gift of healing and governing so that they fulfill the Old Testament types or images in the Orthodox Church. Healing is a ministry from the Holy Spirit and the holy apostles. Faith is always an important component of receiving healing, and both the Old and New Testaments confirm this teaching. Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann speaks of food as dead without God’s power to bless it in Great Lent. So, the clergy bless the oil in a service and apply it to the body of the person who receives it. At times it was done in the home, if the person was very ill. It was also common to serve the holy oil at church led by the clergy present there. The prayers of the service ask on behalf of the sick or dying that the Holy Spirit come and heal the person presented, and to bless the oil that stands for the healing not only of the body due to our fallen state but also for the restoration of our souls wounded by sins and desires. In a commentary on the Gospel of Mark 6, Priest Victor of Antioch in the 5th c. taught, “… for it is manifest to anyone that prayer brings about everything.” Without the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us and the creation we bless to help us, everything remains symbolic. But we have the reality, the antitype, the living presence of the Holy Spirit to make us whole again. Like the eucharist and confession and baptism, holy oil forgives sins and helps us to repent. Our holy fathers in the faith connected the unction service and the holy oil to forgiveness of and remission of sins as well as further strength in our struggle for fuller repentance. “God has the power” this chapter emphasizes in outlining the meaning and practice of unction.
While the West tended to view unction as exclusively for the dying and not for the penitent at heart, the East viewed the holy oil as the power to repent and remit sins from our fallen Adamic nature that will help us become holier. That difference is rooted in an understanding of what the Holy Apostle James teaches and the Orthodox understanding of our common need for healing the soul and body together. Humans have a defective unity between soul and body that negatively affects our development of human and divine relationships. So, rather than being exclusively a service of “last rites,” it’s a service for bringing our human nature back to the kingdom of God that is always “at hand,” around the corner of our earthily life. Those in old age, in danger of death, psychological illness, diseased, close to death and really anyone else, even the departed, can receive the holy oil for the repair of our brokenness. That unction can reach beyond the grave is uniquely Orthodox and hopeful. The healing of the soul is just as important as healing the body. After we depart, we can receive help. Dcn. Barna and Mrs. Barna have discussed this topic of Orthodox traditional burial and theology in their book, A Christian Ending, in which they describe how the body of an Orthodox Christian is lathered in holy oil. That process mystically transfers to our souls, since our human nature is dual, not single. We are part of both the unseen, spiritual world and we are in the physical realm with the animals, trees, the waters, and the earth – all the elements as well as oil. We are healed by divine food as we were originally wounded by dead food through the serpent’s lies. So, sin, death, and suffering are linked to our common colds, our pain, and our loved ones who we have lost to disease and illness. To heal a sickness, a remission of sins must happen too. And our Protestant neighbors will say how can that be so, if Christ has already died on the Cross for our sins? We must fulfill Christ’s Cross by participating in our healing through His work and grace. Since we are not yet departed from this world, we are sojourning through it so that we need spiritual and physical help along the way in the holy mysteries to be prepared to live in the kingdom of God. Everything in the Church is preparation and recognition that we need God’s help – not just symbolically or individually. We need to participate publicly, physically for own sake and through orderly governance and distribution of God’s grace to His people. It’s curious that St. John the Forerunner (the Baptist) inaugurates the kingdom of God and Christ’s coming with the famous divine words, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” and repentance is so often a theme in the Bible, yet many Christians do not want to view repentance in connection with our real earthily struggle and preparation through the sacraments that clearly point to the fulfillment and meaning of Old Testament types.
Metropolitan Hilarion touches on the question of why some aren’t healed physically in the unction service. He says first that everyone can walk away with healing, since it is not restricted to physical but spiritual renewal here and now – the forgiveness of sins and the ability to walk a new life. To the Orthodox, unction always works for the faithful. He explains that glorification in fallen humanity is seen in the healing and in the illness itself because God is in all things. It’s God’s will that “all should be saved” and St. Silouan the Athonite taught to focus our thoughts on that teaching. It’s possible now that God can be glorified within us and in any bad situation, which we find ourselves, taught St. Cyril of Alexandria. Barsanuphius and John of Gaza taught that, “Illness may come from negligence and disorder … It is up to you to be neglectful or prodigal and to fall into those, until you reach the point of correction” (Letters, 521). It’s worth noting again in passing that the New Testament and modern Greek term for “eternal hell” is kolasis, which means correction. Unction might be considered from an eastern perspective a form of fatherly correction for sins committed and in need of a physician’s oil. But maybe not. Symeon the New Theologian taught that illness is the result of corruption because of sin – not believing in God and keeping the divine fast for all life, for more life in Paradise. So, by healing “the inner man” and becoming a new, good person, we begin to reverse everything corruptible in our bodies and soul in the resurrection. We are made aware again that we are corrupt and separated from ourselves, our body and soul fight each other, and we are blind to God. But unction restores those inward realities, which is called the “true health and strength.” The tax collectors, the Galileans, the Samaritan woman, the Centurion, the harlot and the thief all realized their need for inner healing unlike the Pharisees and the rich. The scribes seemed to have viewed physical healing as a means to an end – the storing up of extra food, wealth, and power on earth – which is what Satan first used to tempt Christ during his forty days in the desert.
The oil has powerful imagery in the New Testament. It’s especially connected when the harlot poured out ointment over the Master’s feet and washed him with her hair. We see in this story that blessed oil touches both Christ and the sinful person, and it is connected to becoming a good, whole person and humility. Metropolitan Hilarion shows us that all things can become the opportunity for transfiguration and repentance. He teaches, “[I]n Christ suffering is not [always] removed; it is transformed into victory,” and “The defeat itself become the victory.” All suffering can have meaning and can become our personal proclamation and entrance into the kingdom of God, to inaugurate our victory in Christ. The unction service itself contains Epistle and Gospel readings. The healing of the Canaanite woman’s possessed daughter and Good Samaritan are images that connect holy oil to the spiritual realities that help us to become aware of our need for forgiveness of sins.
Metropolitan Hilarion teaches that “…every sacrament is linked with the Eucharist.” The gifts of the mysteries make both the priest and the people holy, and the mysteries are important in drawing us together into one body or community – a communion of people in Christ. When we are healed, we become communal people, and we are healed in the community of the faithful. Without the mysteries there is no lasting community or substantial communion. The next chapter discusses marriage and the service of matrimony more specifically – a sacrament like the others that forms parishes, cities, and communities. Marriage is one of the deepest of mysteries that is made holy in the Eucharist. Love is the greatest of gifts, and it requires at least two people to exist. It is not good to be alone because there is no love in self-love or isolation from all communal activities, but it’s only found in other persons.