The sacrament of anointing provides a ritual for the passage of sickness. What it affirms is that in the suffering and sickness of the Christian, Christ becomes incarnate. Such enfleshment is possible because in sickness and suffering the Christian shares in the reality of Christ's own redemptive suffering.

To suffer with faith in Christ is to reproduce the pattern of Christ's death. Suffering in that spirit is filled with hope, for it bears the sure promise of resurrection. If we copy Christ's suffering, "he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body" (Phil 3:21).

The Christian in suffering becomes an imitation and an image of Christ and "if in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection" (Rom 6:5).

Anointing is one of the ways that the Church celebrates the event of Christ's own loving concern for those who are sick in the Church. It is a ritual that recognizes that human beings are one in their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual experiences.

Through the symbol of anointing, the Christian community hopes to make it possible for the fragmented person to deal with the presence of disorder and weakness at whatever levels these is experienced. In baptism, the person was commissioned to offer praise in the assembly and to fulfill the mission given to the Church by Christ. It becomes the purpose of anointing to help the sick persons to continue to function as people baptized.

The Risen Christ is greatly concerned that illness not turns members of his priestly people away from their sharing in his redemptive mission. He wants them to have peace of heart and a vigorous confidence in God, so that they can turn to God in worshipful submission and praise. They need the help of his healing grace, that they may suffer in union with Christ and pass with him into new life - whether still in this world or beyond death.

Therefore, anointing is the sacrament of the seriously ill which offers a grace of healing, so that the members of the priestly people may grow through their sickness. Anointing is the liturgy which clarifies that suffering and sickness are not the symbols of sin but of grace, not of testing and purification, but of a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

When the New Testament speaks of Jesus referring to his own Messiahship in terms of certain discernable facts: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear and so forth; it is expressing a meaning which is deeper than physical healing.

Jesus is talking about those who cannot hear the Word of God, who cannot see the manifestation of God in this world, who are burdened with sin and so are not in union with God. What Jesus claims for these events is not so much that they are miraculous physical healing, but rather future signs of his kingdom.

This kingdom which was the primary focus of Jesus' preaching is a kingdom where there will be no more sin and suffering, no evil or disabilities. Thus, what has taken place in these miracles points to what will happen to all at the end of time.

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