Is any 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 man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (Jas. 5:14-15)
This passage has been used throughout the history of the Church to establish the ancient pedigree of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (or the Anointing of the Sick).
John Calvin wrote that “The Papists boast mightily of this passage” of the epistle, and goes on to say that this Scripture is “wickedly and ignorantly perverted” when used to defend the sacrament of the sick. What strikes me as most interesting are Calvin’s reasons for disconnecting this passage from healing and from the sacrament of healing; rather than engage in an argument from the text, he argues from his present-day experience.
Calvin admits that “it was used as a sacrament by the disciples of Christ”, but argues that it was temporary, because “the reality of this sign” – physical healing – “continued only for a time in the Church”. For Calvin, since “God has taken away from the world for more than fourteen hundred years” the gift of healing, it only follows that “nothing is more absurd than to call that a sacrament which is void and does not really present to us that which it signifies.” In short, the anointing of the sick was at one time a sacrament, but it was a temporary sacrament, “because it is evident that the thing signified has long ago ceased.” (John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of James, 5:14-15)
The Council of Trent addressed this view of Calvin’s, and instructed Catholics to disregard the teachings of “those who assert that [the sacrament] has already ceased, as though it were only to be referred to the grace of healing in the primitive church.” (Council of Trent, “On the Sacrament of Extreme Unction”, chp. 3)
The universal catechism that was published by order of this council provided an answer to Calvin’s objection concerning the fact that healings no longer occurred in his day:
And if in our days the sick obtain this effect [of physical healing] less frequently, this is to be attributed, not to any defect of the Sacrament, but rather to the weaker faith of a great part of those who are anointed with the sacred oil, or by whom it is administered; for the Evangelist bears witness that the Lord wrought not many miracles among His own, because of their unbelief. (Catechism of the Council of Trent, “The Effects of Extreme Unction”)
In other words, if it was a rare thing to see people actually being healed through this sacrament, it was because those who received it and/or those who administered it had a lack of faith in its healing effects. This admission strikes me as something of a rebuke against both priests and parishioners in those times: the catechism applies to them the words of the Gospels, in which the people of Jesus’ hometown are said to have hindered the healings of Jesus because of their unbelief.
Sometimes we can let experience dictate our theology. Calvin saw no healings taking place, and concluded that what St. James taught was a temporary provision. The Church could not very well counter this by pointing to healings taking place all over the world; they just weren’t happening. But I like that the Church didn’t then concede the point, or try to say, “well, obviously the only ‘healing’ intended here is spiritual healing.” Instead, the response was, “maybe we’ve become too much like Nazareth, and our unbelief is what prevents more healings from taking place.”
I am praying that this becomes less and less true of priests and Catholic faithful in our times. The sacrament was instituted for the healing of the sick, and I believe it still retains that power and purpose today.
