Tag Archives: Holy Unction

Here was at home.

church, home, homemaking, quotes, , , , , , ,

Today was most wonderful, as it was a fully At Home Day, after a long period of being away every day, always for good things, of course. It could be called a catch-up day, as I’ve had the time to concentrate on tasks that have been getting shoved aside and neglected for too long. Cooking and tidying up took quite a bit of time; because I’ve been cooking more lately, I end up washing dishes more often, but that’s okay, because I enjoy cleaning up the kitchen if I can really give it proper attention. I watered a wilting/dying house plant, and while I ate my lunch I watched the birds outside on the patio, as they finished up the last of the suet feeder.

I took some papaya peelings and Brussels sprouts trimmings out to add to the worm bucket. And it occurred to me, since worm farming is called vermiculture or vermicomposting, etc., maybe I could call my worms “vermi’s” — what do you think? It sounds cuter than worms. This is what my worms typically look like when I take off the lid of their 5-gallon bucket. I’m always relieved if they are looking alive. When the weather drops to freezing, they are unhappy, and disappear into the center of their habitat to huddle together.

It’s been raining steadily all day — until now, when just before the sun went down, it came out and made everything sparkle — and I knew last night that I would want to have a fire in the stove so that I wouldn’t be distracted by being cold, on this day of opportunity. So I brought quite a few logs into the garage in advance of the rain, before I left for a General Unction service at a sister parish.

At this Orthodox service we pray and sing, and hear seven epistle readings and seven Gospel readings by, ideally, seven priests. Last night we only had one bishop and four priests, which meant that when we got to the anointings “for the healing of soul and body,” we had just five of those. Surely they were more than adequate to convey this special grace during Lent. One of the epistle readings included this passage from the book of James:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? 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 will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

(I didn’t take pictures at the service, but I found online these images that are typical.)

Since I opened my sleepy eyes I’ve been blissful knowing that I didn’t have to watch the clock, or change my clothes and get in the car to go anywhere. Much of my morning could be contemplative. Though my supply is very low, there were plenty of logs still, to keep the fire going and the house cozy. It seemed the most blessed day. Once, for a brief moment, a thought came to mind, comparing my life to the “old times” of a few years or decades ago — but I regained my focus pretty fast.

After dinner I was reading in a church calendar that has quotes for every day. This one from St. Luke the Blessed Surgeon was just on point:

It is not right to speak of the former years and to bless them and to curse our own age. We must know that in every age and in every place, people who actually seek their salvation find it.

-St. Luke of Simferopol and Crimea

St. Luke might well have reason to bless his former life, that is: before his wife died leaving their four children motherless, before Lenin came to power, and before his three imprisonments and torture. He had his priorities right, as you can see by reading his life here.

It’s likely that sometime in the future I will fall into longing backward for days like today; I hope the example of St. Luke will help me to cut it short and be fully present in whatever kind of days lie ahead. But for today, his exhortation made me glad that I had been able to be here and now, and that the here was at home.

The old child at the heart of him.

books, church, Lent, , , , , , , ,

Morning light was filtering through fog as I read this passage from Luke Chapter 11:

No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.

Soon enough there began to play in my mind a hymn that I haven’t sung since childhood in the Presbyterian Church, “Open My Eyes, That I May See.” I looked up the hymn in one of the several hymnals our household has collected from previous generations of my late husband’s family, and the lyrics contain the essence of a humble prayer.

But though spiritual sight must be part of what Christ is talking about, twice He uses the words, “whole body full of light.” Pause and think on that! What can it even mean? We can theorize about it, but Christ, Who called Himself “The light of the world,” is not an idea or a theory or a spiritual practice. He will have to teach us what this means by experience. Our yearly Lenten effort is our effort to return again and again to that lifelong process. And He has many ways of opening our eyes and bringing us to Himself, customized to each person’s unique situation.

In The Princess and Curdie, we meet Curdie again not long after the exciting events of The Princess and the Goblin, during which he learns a lesson on humility. But already Curdie, in his young teens, is losing some of his youthful goodness. If our lives are like mirrors that are meant to reflect the glory of our Creator, his mirror is not doing that very well; it has gotten dirty by slow degrees and not even his parents understand why their son does not bring them joy as he used to.

One reason for his not being “in a good way,” our narrator describes like this: “As Curdie grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind – with the usual consequence, that he was getting rather stupid – one of the chief signs of which was that he believed less and less in things he had never seen.”

MacDonald sermonizes more in this book than in The Princess and the Goblin. But his little sermons are wise and kind, so I don’t mind them. I do wonder if children would make much use of them, however. He contrasts what is happening to Curdie with the ideal:

“The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother’s darling, and more, his father’s pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born.”

Looking at Curdie, I am reminded of why we are on our Lenten journey: so that we can by some small effort cooperate with God as He does whatever work is necessary to bring us back home, as the Prodigal Son came home, to the “old child” of our heart.

For Curdie, the means involved a white pigeon:

“Curdie had made himself a bow and some arrows, and was teaching himself to shoot with them. One evening in the early summer, as he was walking home from the mine with them in his hand, a light flashed across his eyes. He looked, and there was a snow-white pigeon settling on a rock in front of him, in the red light of the level sun.

“It was indeed a lovely being, and Curdie thought how happy it must be flitting through the air with a flash – a live bolt of light. For a moment he became so one with the bird that he seemed to feel both its bill and its feathers, as the one adjusted the other to fly again, and his heart swelled with the pleasure of its involuntary sympathy. Another moment and it would have been aloft in the waves of rosy light – it was just bending its little legs to spring:  that moment it fell on the path broken-winged and bleeding from Curdie’s cruel arrow.

“With a gush of pride at his skill, and pleasure at his success, he ran to pick up his prey. I must say for him he picked it up gently — perhaps it was the beginning of his repentance….”

As the pigeon lay bleeding and limp in his hand, and looked long and wondering at him, “Curdie’s heart began to grow very large in his bosom. What could it mean? It was nothing but a pigeon, and why should he not kill a pigeon? But the fact was that not till this very moment had he ever known what a pigeon was.”

The drama of the next moments captures the storminess of a human heart when it strives against the pain of self-knowledge, and the temptation to despair. In the Curdie stories the white pigeons figure as messengers and angels of the divine Love, and after an indefinable time out of time, which may be less than a minute, our boy comes through the storm with clarity, and proceeds with his repentance.

With clarity… under the influence of that Light that wants to fill all the dark corners of us, to make us radiant with Himself. It does seem an impossible image, until we remember that our personal task is to respond to the light we are given, respond to the Light Who is Christ, in this moment, and do the next thing that we are able, to “clean the dirt from our mirrors.”

During Lent, the Orthodox Church gives us many tools for this holy work, and one of them is the Holy Unction service. In addition to the one I described here, another General Unction service is often held during Lent in which anyone prepared may participate, whether or not they are gravely ill, and I am looking forward to being the recipient of its healing grace this evening.

May we all make good use of our sins,
and of the lights that come to us,
and Dear Lord, fill us with Your Light.

The wounds are consecrated.

church,

P1120829 holy unctionI attended a Holy Unction service with my goddaughter last night. Before the service proper our priest read an article on The Grace of Suffering. An excerpt:

Weakness and sickness wipe away everything superficial in us. We are inwardly purified when we are baptized with tears of suffering. The Lord always visits us there, while we are dry  on the inside, truly thirsting for living water and reaching out for Him in what we know, deeply and seriously.

He also told us about various responses he has seen in people who were healed from their sicknesses, and said that usually if we are relieved of one form of suffering, it is for further suffering.

It was a long service, including psalms, hymns, prayers, and seven anointings with oil, each preceded by an epistle reading and a Gospel reading. Before each Gospel reading a candle was lit, which helped us keep track of where we were in the service. Seven times the ill and afflicted lined up to be anointed on their forehead, cheeks, lips, chest, and hands.

I was a bit scattered in mind and heart and didn’t feel able to participate with as much attention as I’d have liked, but it was a great blessing nonetheless to help in little practical ways and by praying along. Having my mind washed by the Word, and being in the church with so many repentant hearts singing, “Hearken unto me, O Master, Hearken unto me, O Holy One….” was soothing to my own soul.

Here is an excerpt from another article about this sacrament:

The express purpose of the sacrament of holy unction is healing and forgiveness. Since it is not always the will of God that there should be physical healing, the prayer of Christ that God’s will be done always remains as the proper context of the sacrament. In addition, it is the clear intention of the sacrament that through the anointing of the sick body the sufferings of the person should be sanctified and united to the sufferings of Christ. In this way, the wounds of the flesh are consecrated, and strength is given that the suffering of the diseased person may not be unto the death of his soul, but for eternal salvation in the resurrection and life of the Kingdom of God.

It is indeed the case that death inevitably comes to man. All must die, even those who in this life are given a reprieve through healing in order to have more time on the earth. Thus, the healing of the sick is not itself a final goal, but is merely “instrumental” in that it is given by God as a sign of his mercy and as a grace for the further opportunity of man to live for him and for others in the life of this world.