Immediately after the postcommunion prayer, the oil is brought forward and the bishop says these words of introduction:
Dear Friends in Christ: In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the creation; and, throughout history, God, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, has empowered God’s people to serve God. As a sign of that gift, the priests and kings of Israel were anointed with oil; and our Saviour Jesus was himself anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism as the Christ, God’s own Messiah. At baptism, Christians are likewise anointed by that same Spirit to empower them for God’s service. Let us now set apart this oil to be the sign of that anointing.
Then he blesses the oil for chrismation, the oil that is used at baptisms and for ordinations (if someone wishes to have his or her hands anointed).
After that, he blesses the oil used for unction with these words:
O Lord, holy Father, giver of health and salvation: Send your Holy Spirit to sanctify this oil; that, as your holy apostles anointed many that were sick and healed them, so may those who in faith and repentance receive this holy unction be made whole; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Oil as a symbol of healing can be traced back to the Letter of James wherein James writes: ‘Is any among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.’ But the tradition of using pure olive oil predates Christianity — pressed from beaten olives free of all foreign debris, olive oil was used centuries before Christ’s time. Oil of unction was so important to the Israelites that the Book of Exodus gives several rules for its preparation and use. It was made aromatic by adding balsam, incense and myrrh. That tradition continues to this day
Ever since I was ordained to the priesthood 15 years ago, I have always carried my little oil stock with me wherever I go. This oil stock has travelled to France and to Central America countless times. You never know when it might be needed. On one visit to El Salvador, we went to see new houses built after an earthquake, we also visited with the families who were moving into them. One family couldn’t because Alonzo, the husband, had had stomach surgery. He was too weak to move even from his bed. We started over to the temporary ranchito, a little shack made out of tin, to lay hands on him, when I remembered that my oil stock was back in the truck so I ran and got it. Offering the outward sign of oil reminding Alonzo of God’s inward healing grace seemed to make our prayer more complete, even though I know it was sufficient without the oil. Nonetheless, I knew he would smell that oil and remember that two priests had laid hands on him and prayed for him. I have anointed the nearly dead and the dead, as a sign of God’s presence with them, and as a reminder of the action that Mary performs on Jesus’ behalf before he died. Tracing a cross of olive oil and touching their foreheads at that moment is perhaps the most tender and loving action the church can offer them to help them on the journey that lies ahead of them.
Mary’s anointing Jesus is a stunning story that points toward some of the major themes of Holy Week—Jesus’ impending death, and Jesus’ love for his disciples. It looks to the cross but then beyond Holy Week to the newness that the events of Holy Week will make possible.
We find ourselves at the house of Lazarus after his resurrection. Jesus has gone to Bethany, knowing that by doing so, he is about to provoke the Pharisees who are ready to kill him. He raises Lazarus from the dead, and in doing so, looks into the tomb to see his own death.
Mary, somehow, knows that and reaches out to Jesus, ministering to him in a way that brings about criticism. Using pure nard, a sweet oil, she anoints Jesus’ feet. It is such a tender gesture of love, and care, and a gesture of preparation for burial. She offers what she has, an ordinary thing made holy by her actions, holding nothing back in expressing her love for Jesus, her love for the man who brought her brother back from the dead, and for the man who will make all things new.
Judas complains, saying her anointing Jesus is too extravagant, beyond the norms of social behaviour. She has squandered a whole year’s salary on expensive perfume. Shouldn’t she have spent it on something better? But she is responding to Jesus’ impending outpouring of his life for the rest of us.
Mary expresses her love and discipleship toward Jesus in the symbolic act of his anointing. Later in the gospel of John, at the Last Supper, Jesus will suggest another way to express this love and discipleship — and act toward one another in love — with the same extravagance that Mary embodies in her anointing of Jesus. In the later example, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.
When we love as Jesus does, we begin to experience the fullness of life that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus make possible. Mary holds nothing back; Jesus holds nothing back. It is part of our vocation as recipients of that extravagant gift to hold nothing back. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, ‘The limit of our love for God should be to love God without limit.’ That same love of God should transfer to love of neighbour. When we exchange that love with one another, we surely shall be healed even beyond the capacities of the most extravagant oil there is. When we exchange that love with one another, life will come out of death and we will be made new.
Down cellar, under the nave, are forsythia and apple tree blossoms being forced for our garden of repose. They wait for us on Thursday.
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