Catechesis · Inquirer
Holy Unction
Catechesis · Inquirer
Holy Unction
Holy Unction (*euchelaion* -- oil of prayer) is the sacrament of healing for soul and body. It is not last rites -- a farewell sacrament administered to the dying. It is a sacrame…
Question
What is Holy Unction?
Holy Unction (*euchelaion* -- oil of prayer) is the sacrament of healing for soul and body. It is not last rites -- a farewell sacrament administered to the dying. It is a sacrament of restoration: the anointing of the sick with oil, with prayers for healing, administered by priests. The name "unction" (anointing) connects it to the healing ministry of the apostles and to the anointing that Christ practised.
Holy Unction is administered not only to those who are gravely ill but to anyone who is sick -- physically or spiritually -- who desires healing. In many parishes, it is administered communally in Holy Week (usually on Holy Wednesday), when all the faithful receive anointing. The communal form reflects the understanding that illness and sin are not merely private -- they affect the whole community, and the community's prayer heals together with the individual's.
The teaching
Healing of soul and body -- what unction accomplishes
The prayer at the anointing: "Holy Father, physician of souls and bodies, who didst send Thine only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, who healeth every sickness and delivereth from death -- heal Thy servant from the infirmity of body and soul." The prayer addresses God as the physician -- not merely of souls (as some spiritualising tendencies would have it) but of bodies too. The body is included in the scope of the sacrament's healing intent.
The seven Gospel readings of the full unction service are all accounts of healing: the healing of the paralytic, of the ten lepers, of the blind man. Each is read as a living prayer -- not a historical account but a present proclamation of Christ's ongoing healing will. The Christ who healed in the Gospels is the same Christ who is present in the unction service. The readings are not evidence for healing; they are invocations of the Healer.
Holy Father, physician of souls and bodies -- heal Thy servant from the infirmity of body and soul that weighs upon him, and raise him up by Thy grace.
The unction prayer addresses God as "physician of souls and bodies" -- a formulation that refuses to split the person into a soul that matters and a body that does not. Orthodox theology consistently insists on the full humanity of the person: body and soul together, both created by God, both fallen, both in need of healing, both to be raised at the resurrection. The unction sacrament is the concrete expression of this integral anthropology.
Prayer of Holy Unction
Orthodox Rite of Holy Unction · ancient
The Healing Church
How unction fits within a tradition of healing prayer
The healing ministry of the Church did not end with the apostolic age. Throughout the tradition, the saints have been instruments of healing -- not as self-generated miracle workers but as people transparent to the divine life, through whose prayers and presence the divine power flowed. Holy Unction is the sacramental form of this ongoing healing ministry: the Church, gathered in prayer around the sick person, invoking the physician of souls and bodies on their behalf.