This Sacrament was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ as a spiritual means for healing the ills of the body as well as a means for healing spiritual diseases of the soul. While the Sacrament of Repentance heals the spiritual and moral failings (or disease), it can also in an intermediate way promote the healing of bodily sickness. It is expressly for such who are in need of both spiritual and physical succor that this beneficent gift in the Sacrament of Unction with Oil was granted to the Church by her Lord.
The conditions necessary to make this Sacrament valid are the following: I. Prayer by the Priests (or one Priest in extreme necessity); prayer on part of those present; II. faith, prayer, and repentance on part of the sick one; III. the anointment of the sick one with blessed oil in the name of the Lord. When the Lord Jesus Christ selected the Twelve Apostles, he committed to them his mission, and sending them out into the world, he said: Heal the sick (Matt., x. 8 and Mark, vi. 13). Yet more precise is the command of the first leader of the early church in Jerusalem;—this Disciple and Apostle of Jesus Christ said: 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, v. 15, 16.)
It is indeed very sad to note how in our day people, who call themselves Christians, give no thought to the consolation of our holy religion, but they turn, in trouble and in sickness, with all their hope, and sometimes with all their money also, to what comfort they can obtain from man and science. It is not our intention to say aught against science; on the contrary, we assert, with the confirmation of the voice of the church, that all true science, based on sound reason, is a gift of God, and should be utilized for the temporal welfare of man.
In the majority of unfortunate cases worldly people think of the church, the Commandments of God, and their duty, when all hope for a continuance of the enjoyment of life on this earth has left them. Then they send for a priest and wish to receive the holy communion. Sometimes a few dim faculties of existence still linger in their wasting bodies, and a semblance of confession is made. Oh, but what a mockery of Repentance that must be! And it often happens, too, that such people go off without the least preparation. Man certainly may attain much, and he has attained much with his God-given talents; yet what is impossible to him, is possible with God, and the seemingly impossible, and that which is beyond the natural, is held out to us unworthy ones, through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, and given to us in His Church, and in the Grace of the Sacraments which He instituted. May we not offend the Almighty! Glory to our Saviour—the Lord Jesus Christ, together with the graciously sanctifying Holy Ghost, and the Father of lights, from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift. Amen.
This is a digital edition of Beacon from the Bay: The Collected Works of Saint Sebastian Dabovich of Jackson and San Francisco, a several-month-long project to catalogue the out-of-prints works of Saint Sebastian Dabovich, the first American-born Orthodox priest.
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