Anointing the Sick

Mass with Anointing of the Sick

October 10, 2024
2 Cor 4:10-18
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“We always carry about in the body the dying of Jesus” (2 Cor 4: 10).

No matter how healthy we may be, we all have pain and suffer inconvenience, injury, and illness.  Most of us don’t leap joyfully out of bed in the morning; our prayer might be, “O God, another day!”  Little things like paper cuts can be really annoying.  And then there are colds, flu, stubbed toes, broken bones, surgeries, etc.  Our bodies remind us every day of our frailty.

Someone may feel like he’s already got one foot in the grave.  No matter how healthy we may be, we’re all dying.  Our bodies remind us every day of our mortality.  “Our outer self is wasting away,” Paul remarks (4:16).  In a community like this one, we may be more aware of that than in most communities.  And you’ve just celebrated Bob Moran’s funeral.[1]  Our community over on Echo Bay is aware, as well; our province has lost 18 confreres in the last 5 years, including 2 from our house.

What sustains us all, as it did Paul in his tribulations, “constantly being given up to death” 4:11) thru daily hardships and persecution, is that we surrender our bodies as well as our hearts to Jesus.  We unite our sufferings, trivial or severe, to his cross.  We are confident “that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus” (4:14).

Our celebration of the Anointing of the Sick betokens the life of Jesus, God’s Anointed One, present to us.  “Therefore, we aren’t discouraged; rather, altho our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (4:16)—and not only by this sacrament but, more vitally, by the sacramental memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus, his living body and blood.

---

[1] A member of the Iona Prep community whose funeral was earlier this day at Holy Family Church.