In one of the countless podcast interviews Bishop Robert Barron has done in recent years, he was asked whether he spent much time thinking about his own mortality, and about suffering and death overall. His immediate answer was, “all the time.” He then added something to the effect of, “Every time I say the Rosary or pray the Hail Mary on its own, the line ‘pray for us sinners now, and at the our of our death’ immediately brings to mind our fate as humans, that we have only a short time here on Earth.”
Paraphrasing aside, Barron’s overarching point was that Catholic Christian belief, no matter how morbid this next statement sounds, is built on the clear fact that all humans die. All humans experience some degree of suffering and illness — that the possibility of staring death in the face exists every single day.
Therefore, along with being spiritually reborn through Christ’s death and resurrection, believers still must experience physical death before entering the spiritual state that follows. After all, if Original Sin in fact led humankind to physical death, Christians are to hold strong to the salvation they have received through God’s grace. The sacraments help believers nurture their relationship with God’s grace; and some sacraments can provide healing, spiritual and/or physical.
Anointing of the Sick, one of the seven sacraments, has roots in the New Testament, but with a long, ever evolving history in how and why it should be practiced. After Jesus had empowered the Apostles to heal the sick (Mark 16:18), along with other acts that Jesus commissioned the Apostles to perform in his name, the Apostles’ successors and the Christian community at large continued carrying out Jesus’ ministry, including the ability to heal others. James 5:14-16, a key passage that has been used throughout Church History to support the anointing the sick, is one of many examples where Jesus has given authority to the Apostles — in this case, the ability to heal (Luke 9:1-2, Acts 9:32-33) — followed by their letters confirming the Church as a unified means to carry out the ministry (Tkacik SLU 2023; Power 560, 561).
However, as with other sacraments having to be thoroughly explained and properly developed, anointing of the sick, which was not specifically called a sacrament until the fifth century (Tkacik Module 6 AVP), went through its own evolution from the Apostolic Age until well in the Late Middle Ages. What stands out most is the Church’s decision to flip the script on the theological emphasis for anointing. Not that the shift was an underhanded move, or that it lacked clear reasoning, or that was it dramatically different from the original theological emphasis — but, as other sacraments would also evolve from the cooperative relationship between community and clergy, to a practice mostly associated with holy orders, anointing of the sick would gradually follow suit from around the eighth century onward (Tkacik SLU 2023).
In short, for the first eight centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection, anointing of the sick was primarily seen as a healing rite — though, during the fifth through eight centuries, it was also more commonly seen as a means to forgive sins. Moreover, throughout most of the first several centuries, all Christians, as a more community-centered Church that gradually became more institutional, could administer the sacrament when necessary. This did not lessen the need for bishops to be involved — bishops were still responsible for blessing oils and performing a laying on of hands when participating in the rite — just that its use was not originally limited to any one role within the community (Tkacik SLU 2023; Power 561).
Then, beginning in the eight century and moving onward, anointing’s theological emphasis moved the healing aspect to the secondary reason and promoted forgiveness of sins to the primary emphasis. Also at that time, while the Church was shifting other sacraments, such as reconciliation, to the priests’ and bishops’ ontological means to act in persona Christi, the laity phased out from administering to the sick. And because anointing now mostly involved forgiving sins, it also morphed into a kind of penance, or purification, for believers who were close to death. As Tkacik points out when explaining the difference between penance via the sacrament of reconciliation and penance via anointing of the sick, “Whereas penance purified one’s soul, anointing came to be seen as purifying one’s body in preparation for death and the beatific vision” (Tkacik SLU 2023).
With both the theological and ecclesiological shift in anointing the sick, and which took on the form of what is now called “Last Rites,” the Scholastics, who had expounded upon all other sacraments as well, referred to the rite as extreme unction. The sacrament of anointing the sick not only focused primarily on forgiving sins, but also, as Thomas Aquinas explained, could free the dying from any sin that would keep them from entering into eternal life in heaven. In fact, when the Council of Trent convened and then drafted the Doctrine of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, the Church further reinforced extreme unction as a sacrament to be administered to believers who are near death or have become gravely ill, all while emphasizing the forgiveness of sins. To quote Tkacik again, “So strong was the emphasis on the forgiveness of sins, that the rite called for the priest to incite repentance from the sick, even if we had to evoke the torments of hell…” (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Along with extreme unction being solidified as a sacrament for those with an extreme illness or who are near death, holy orders had grown into the solidified means to administer the sacrament. Namely, because holy orders involve receiving an “indelible and ontological mark upon the soul of the ordained,” and all other sacraments were also meant to be performed in persona Christi, then it stood to reason to have priests and bishops perform Last Rites (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Yet some clarification is in order with how extreme unction is administered and what it ultimately means: As Power points out, drawing on Thomas Aquinas’ works, extreme unction is not specifically meant to forgive mortal sins; rather, it is like a medicine that gives spiritual strength to live in grace, thereby helping the believer work through any shortcomings attached to the sin. However, as with conditions also applied to other sacraments, extreme unction can still be administered in cases where a believer cannot physically carry out a penance or express contrition — and in these rare cases, the sacrament can be used to forgive sins usually forgiven through reconciliation (562).
Fast forward to sacramental theology in modern day: Inspired by Vatican II’s efforts to bring a stronger sense of community to the Church, the Church has been refocusing on the healing aspect of anointing, while also balancing the sacrament’s role in forgiving sins as needed. One major change in how extreme unction is defined is that it is not only for those who are near death or already extremely ill: If a believer is at the onset of a severe illness, or potentially in danger of dying, then the sacrament may be administered as soon as possible. Further, multiple anointings are allowed, depending on the degree of illness or because of other varying conditions, such as potentially life-threatening surgery, or even a severe mental illness (Sacrosanctum Concilium #73 – 75; Tkacik SLU 2023)
Now, all this discussion leads to a word that usually goes hand-in-hand with illness or being near-death: suffering. As most humans generally experiencing suffering when dealing with an extreme illness or are near death, how are believers to view suffering in a possibly positive light? Beginning with the sacrament itself, believers are served a reminder that Jesus experienced the epitome of horrific suffering — meaning that believers, too, are to experience their own passion, in which they are then sanctified by God’s grace through the sacraments (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Meanwhile, modern day culture, particularly here in the West, tends to see suffering as purely negative, as something inflicted upon humankind and therefore must be eradicated, if at all possible. Not that suffering is wonderful — but the reasons for why it should be shunned appear to involve hyper-focusing on self-love / self-worth, or demanding that medicine and science fix every conceivable issue involving physical ailments or emotional issues, or having a misguided view about the problem of evil and suffering and how God is supposed to deal with it all, or a whole lot of finger pointing about who or what causes suffering.
But again, what is Christ’s role in the meaning of suffering? Power points to Saint Paul, who shows the important, necessary relationship between human suffering and Jesus’ suffering: First and foremost, he describes Christ as the model for suffering, that to live a Christian life, to take up the Cross (; 2 Corinthians 13:4; Matthew 16:24), means suffering for the greater glory of having a deeply intimate, spiritually invigorating relationship with God. Therefore, Paul also explains the suffering with Christ means being glorified with him (Romans 8:16-19). In other words, suffering is a path to victory: victory over spiritual death, while gaining the strength to receive the gift of eternal life (Power 563).
Works Cited
Power, David N., author. Fiorenza, Francis S., and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.
Sacrosanctum Concilium: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html
Tkacik, Michael J. Saint Leo University, 2023.
Tkacik, Michael J. Saint Leo University, 2023.