Tonight, we come together as a community of faith, seeking the healing power of Jesus. All of us in this Church know that the Sacraments are not equivalent to magic we would see in Harry Potter or from Pen and Teller. Rather, the Sacraments are vehicles of God’s grace and help to conform us into Jesus Christ. We cannot just receive a Sacrament and hope for the best, every time we receive a Sacrament, we need to have the right disposition of the heart. It is just like going to exercise at the gym; we can go to the gym seven days a week for an hour at a time, but if we do not change our habits outside of the gym, we will not lose any weight. This is a reality I am very familiar with.
When we come to receive the Sacraments, if we just take the Body of Christ and think, “ok, I’m all set now, Jesus is going to take over,” and we do not try to live like Jesus outside of these holy walls, then we are not doing it right and we are not worthy of the grace being given to us. The same is true for the other Sacraments as well. If you and your fiancĂ© are not getting along, the Sacrament of Marriage will not change that by itself.
Tonight, if you are here because you think getting anointed with Holy Oil is going to take away your aches and pains, I hate to break it to you, but it probably will not happen. Do not get me wrong here, certainly, with God all things are possible and who am I to say how God plans on working tonight; however, if we all receive this Sacrament without faith and belief and without planning on becoming more like Jesus, then we have all wasted our time coming here.
My brothers and sisters, what does Jesus do at the start of our Gospel? He says: “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, to You I offer praise.” The very first thing Jesus does is give praise and thanks to God. That should be our prayer every morning when we wake up and every night as we fall asleep: “Thank you, Jesus.” That is the starting point of putting our hearts in the right disposition. “Thank you, Jesus.”
Our Lord then says, “Everything has been given over to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.” Friends, tonight the Father and the Son are being revealed to us. God the Father is certainly present in this holy temple because where two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ name, the Blessed Trinity is here among us.
The Father is here present with us because He desires to be with His children. He desires that we gather in His Holy House to worship and adore Him and to share Himself with us in the person of His Divine Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is with us because the red lamp next to the tabernacle and the veil which covers the tabernacle let us know that the Divine Person is truly here present in the Eucharist. We stand in the presence of the Divine Majesty, the Sovereign King and Ruler of the Universe. Finally, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father through the Son, is soon going to make Himself very busy when, in a few minutes, I shall anoint each of you with the Oil of Gladness and Healing, by which God’s grace shall come upon you.
My brothers and sisters, God is real, God is here, and He wants to heal you of every infirmity, both of soul and body because He loves you. Jesus says to us: “Come to Me all you who are labored and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” You see, tonight is not about taking away our aches and pains; rather, tonight is about giving you rest.
We all come here tonight with various pains and ills: cancer, depression, anxiety, diabetes, heart disease, neurological diseases, loneliness, fear, anger, and many other problems. The Church does not reserve this Sacrament for people who are physically sick; this Sacrament is for anyone who is suffering in mind, body, or spirit. Jesus told us tonight in our Gospel to come to Him because He is “gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest, for His yoke is easy and His burden light.” Thank you, Jesus.
The Blessed and Most Trinity is here and active. The Lord wants to heal you of all your pain and suffering, physical or not, and most importantly, the Lord wants to give you rest. Tonight is about healing the heart and the soul. Know that Jesus loves you and He wants your love in return. It starts with the simple prayer: “Thank you, Jesus.” It ends with eternal rest in the new and eternal Jerusalem.
From the time of the ministry of Jesus, healing has been at the center of the Gospel message. In the world of the New Testament, where suffering and sickness are so obviously part of the human condition, the word that is most often used for healing is 'salvation': people are 'saved' from their suffering. Healing is healing of body and soul. The two go together.
In the New Testament, one of the great signs of the coming of God's reign is the healing that Jesus brings. St. Luke tells how, when Jesus returned from his forty-day spiritual struggle in the wilderness, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, He preached in the synagogue of Nazareth, His home town. First, He read from the scroll:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Then, He began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing' (Lk 4:21).
The reading we heard from St. James shows how, from an early stage, the Church practiced anointing with oil as a means of healing. In the passage we heard read, the Apostle James tells us that if any are sick, they should send for the elders of the church. The word for 'elders', presbyteroi, is the word from which we Orthodox Catholics derive our use of the word 'priest' In a later generation, St. James might have said, 'Send for the priest or the priests.'
In the Rite of Anointing, the priests are to pray over the sick person, to anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and then, he says, 'the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven' (5:15). The Apostle James goes on to tell the Christians that they should confess their sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that they may be healed (16). The prayer of the righteous person, he says, is powerful and effective. He gives the example of Elijah, who, according to the First Book of Kings, prayed that there would be no rain, and for three and a half years there was no rain; and then he prayed again, and it rained, 'and the earth yielded its harvest'.
As so often in understanding the New Testament, we have to know something of the Old Testament background to see what St. James is getting at. According to the Book of Kings (1 Kings 17:1), Ahab was one of the worst kings of Israel. He had turned from the true God to serve the Canaanite god Baal. To demonstrate the error of his ways, Elijah prophesied three and a half years of drought. During that time, Elijah went to Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8) on the coast, to the house of a widow, who had one son and was living in extreme poverty.
Despite her own desperate need, she received the prophet hospitably. In response, Elijah ensured that throughout the drought she did not want for the basics to feed herself and her household: meal and oil. The story in Kings goes on to tell how the widow's son was suddenly taken ill and died - which would have been a complete disaster for a dependent single woman - but Elijah lay upon him and prayed to God that he would recover. Elijah's prayer of faith saved the sick child and raised him up. This is the picture that St. James has in mind.
There is a reference to the same story in the New Testament (Luke 4:25), just after Jesus' sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth. When Jesus told the congregation that Isaiah's prophecy about the coming of the God's reign, with its prediction of healing and liberation, was being fulfilled before their eyes, they would have none of it. Jesus then answered by saying that 'No prophet is accepted in his own hometown' and, then, that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when there was a famine for three and a half years, but only to the widow of Zarephath was he sent.
The point for us is that sometimes and in certain circumstances, like the widow, we may see and experience God working with extraordinary power, but there is nothing automatic about it. Lots of people - like the other widows in Israel - do not experience God working in that way. God works as God chooses. This gives us a way of approaching the text from James, because, though we may pray for healing with great faith, healing does not always come in the way that we want it to come, and sometimes does not seem to come at all.
To understand the Apostle’s instructions about anointing, we need to understand the symbolism of oil. Anointing with oil is a symbol and sign of God's blessing. In the twenty-third psalm, the psalmist says, 'You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows' (Psalm 23: 5) and then goes on to say, 'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever'. The whole of Psalm 23 is a wonderful meditation on what it means to be anointed and blessed by God. Psalm 133, which is even shorter, uses the picture of anointing as a picture of the blessing of unity amongst Christians: 'How very good and lovely it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion' (Psalm 133:1-3). This is exactly the point St. James makes when he tells us to confess our sins to one another: reconciliation and unity is a wonderful thing. It is itself a blessing of God, and it brings health, it brings fruitfulness, to our lives.
What then can we expect if we are anointed, with prayer for healing, as the Church has done from the very beginning? I believe we can expect the Risen Christ to work by His Spirit as He worked in His earthly ministry. The Church has from the beginning believed that the first sort of healing we need is forgiveness of sins - and this is what Christ came to bring. The Apostle James is just as interested in the forgiveness of sins as he is in healing: we tend to think we can have one without the other.
In the Gospel, healing of soul and of the body go together. Reconciliation with God and with one another is itself a powerful form of healing. Having said that, we can expect, with the Apostle James, that sometimes, through anointing, there will indeed be wonderful healing of the body or the mind that goes beyond anything medical science can explain. Mostly, though, the healing that comes with anointing will come in the form of forgiveness, renewal, restoration, and reconciliation. This is the spiritual healing so necessary a prerequisite for physical and emotional healing.
Sometimes, as in the ministry of Jesus at Nazareth, there will be no evident healing at all.
It helps to look very closely at what St. James says. He says that the prayer of faith will 'save the sick' and that 'the Lord will raise them up'. Given the background of the story of Elijah, it seems clear that James' first meaning is that the Lord will restore physical health. But we have to appreciate that in Christian teaching the language of salvation applies beyond death.
In the language of the New Testament, Jesus was 'saved' from oblivion after the crucifixion and 'raised' to the right hand of God. In the same way, the Apostle James' language of 'salvation' and of being 'raised' may apply beyond death. Yet, if we have faith and give ourselves over totally to God, then we can rightly believe that God heals and takes care of all things
If there is no physical healing in response to our prayers this does not mean our prayers are useless. We take it in faith that they are powerful and effective, and that they play their part in sickness being transformed from something absolutely negative and destructive to something which may bring good to the sick person and to those around them. Even in continuing, debilitating sickness and in death we may experience God's 'salvation'. Indeed, thinking back to Psalm 23, it is precisely in such dark times (in 'the valley of the shadow of death') that we may find in a special way the presence of God's goodness and mercy.
Tonight, my dear friends, be aware of God’s presence among us and His power to heal and forgive; for He alone is the Great Physician of our souls and bodies and only He can bring us true respite, consolation, and comfort.
Amen.