Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that distinguished the members of the church from others, and so did not count as a \u201csign of the covenant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biblical ground for the practice is James 5:14-15, where James instructs the sick to call for elders, who will pray and anoint in the name of the Lord. It uses a material sign (anointing with oil) and comes with a promise of healing. While denying that it qualifies as a sacrament, many Protestant churches practice anointing.<\/p>\n
James says that the \u201cprayer of faith shall save (sozo<\/em>) the sick, and the Lord will raise (egeiro<\/em>) him up\u201d and that might be taken as a promise of healing. If so, it\u2019s not an absolute promise because not everyone who is anointed gets better. It may be better to take \u201csave\u201d and \u201craise up\u201d in their full theological sense. The sick person is assured by this rite that he will be saved from death because at the last the Lord will raise him from the grave.<\/p>\n When I have performed anointings, I have always included something I learned from Alexander Schmemann: Not everyone who is anointed is healed, but that doesn\u2019t mean the anointing is useless. It accomplishes something regardless of the aftermath, and that something is the act of anointing itself. Just as a baptized person is, ex opere operato<\/em>, a baptized<\/em> person, so a sick person who is anointed is, literally and unquestionably, anointed with oil<\/em> (the verb in James 5:14 is not chrio<\/em> but aleiph0<\/em>). That is a memorial of the fact that the sick person is, still in his sickness, a christened member of Christ, and that his suffering is not in vain, not stupid dumb luck, but somehow a share in the suffering of Christ. That is a great assurance to the sick person. The anointing, laying of hands, and prayer give him hope that, whatever the outcome of his illness, whether he lives or dies, he is Christ\u2019s own possession, and Jesus will keep him.<\/p>\n That might seem a stretch: Is the leukemia of a young child, the diabetes of a middle-aged man, the ovarian cancer of a woman suffering in Christ<\/em>? Doesn\u2019t suffering have to be somehow related to the gospel to be a participation in the sufferings of Christ?\u00a0<\/p>\n