"Sacrament of Compassion"

Originally published in The Anchor, Fall River Diocesan Newspaper, Friday, April 2, 1999, at 1

In his Holy Thursday sermon to his priests during the Chrism Mass on April 1, 1999, Bishop Sean O’Malley of the Fall River Diocese reflected on the priest’s role as minister to persons who are sick or dying. Following are excerpts:

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The Scriptures tell us that this sacrament [of the Anointing of the Sick] is to heal our bodies and to forgive our sins. It is unique in that this Sacrament of Anointing is addressed to both our body and our soul. As in all priestly ministry, we are concerned, not just with the spiritual aspects of people’s lives, but with their entire well-being. . . . The priest’s pastoral love extends to the whole person as well. In the Anointing of the Sick, the priest, like Christ, is reaching out to the sick person with love and concern to bring comfort to body and forgiveness of sin.

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As believers, we approach sickness from the perspective of faith. Pope John Paul II in his letter on "The Christian Meaning of Suffering" (1989) said that through suffering a person is destined to go beyond the self. Suffering, then, is the doorway to transcendence. An illness – whether acute, chronic, or terminal – forces a person to confront the limitations that bodyliness imposes on our souls, our hopes, our dreams, our desire for meaning, for independence. True healing consists less in a cure than in a conversion.

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To attend the sick and dying with compassion requires real depth and prayerfulness. There is something about the suffering of Christ and the experience of suffering in or own lives that allows priests to offer singular consolation to the sick and dying. I think of Father Tom Mara, double-amputee, caring for the ailing sisters and residents of Cranberry Point Nursing Home. Likewise, a priest who struggled to overcome an addiction in his own life is often a mirror of the Father’s mercy to the broken people he serves.

To be a representative of Christ to the sick and dying is a serious matter. The priest makes present the compassion of Christ who shows us the mercy of the Father. It requires that we know what we are about, and have our heart firmly fixed on the One we represent. We must meditate on the sufferings Christ endured, and be convinced that by His Cross, He overcame death. Without this, we will find ourselves lacking. Prayer alone makes the difference.

The priest himself should be a sacrament of compassion. When God becomes visible, tangible, and available on this earth, the result is the Incarnation of Compassion. We look to Jesus to see the face of the Father. The Word, a self-portrait of the Creator, is drawn with the lines of compassion. We hear Jesus’ words: "Don’t be afraid, "don’t worry", "don’t cry." Jesus is moved to compassion by the sight of the sheep without a shepherd. He is moved more by the widow’s mite than by the grandeur of the Temple; and, when everyone was so excited about the miracle of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus was more concerned that she should be given something to eat.

To fulfill his role as a sacrament of compassion, the priest is called to be the embodiment of divine mercy, the prophet of God’s unconditional love. It presumes, insofar as we dare to presume, an acquaintance with the Father’s intentions as revealed in Jesus Christ. The prophet shares not just the knowledge, but also Jesus’ feelings and emotions. As a sacrament of compassion, the priest is called to embody God’s extravagant love.

In the case of terminal illness, the Sacrament of the Sick becomes the important means by which the Church ministers to those who are dying. It is itself a statement about death.

For Christmas, someone gave me a book entitled, "Tuesday’s with Morrie", written by Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, and which has appeared for the last 75 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers List. The book chronicles the weekly visits with a man dying with Lou Gehrig's Disease. The author recounts the conversations with his former university professor. They discuss family, love, money, culture, and forgiveness. They are fascinating conversations. Yet, it is sad to see that the dying man entertains no hope for salvation or an afterlife. This philosophy reflects the thought of Epicureus who sees life as a banquet from which we ought to exit gracefully and thankfully at the end of our allotted time, and disappear into the darkness outside.

The man’s death is a touching thing and the book makes some sound points, for example: that the total dependency brought on by the terminal illness should not be seen as humiliation but as an opportunity to receive total care and love again, as we did in infancy.

Unfortunately, an agnostic notion of death is pushing our modern society toward physician assisted suicide for those who seem not to be properly enjoying the banquet of life, or whose presence might spoil the banquet for others. Morrie concedes that if he were divorced, or living alone, or had no children, he was not sure he could bear what he was going through. For him, like for Dr. Kevorkian, dying is the anteroom to nothingness.

For the believer, death is a rebirth into eternal life. Care for the dying is "pre-natal" care. Just as birthing is often painful and fraught with difficulties, so dying is a difficult journey; but we must never lose sight of the destination we aspire to . . . to go home to God, to our Father.

The priest at the deathbed can affect a person’s eternal life. This does not mean that someone who dies without the sacraments is lost, but that the sacraments are the surer path on our journey home.

When my godmother was dying, I was thousands of miles away, but I called a priest and asked him to anoint her. I wanted her to be surrounded by the grace and loving power of Christ in that most important moment in her life. What a joy for my whole family.

In that defining moment when the dying person embraces death, the priest is himself the sacrament of compassion. Like Simon of Cyrene helping to carry the cross, like Veronica wiping our Lord’s face, like Mary and John on Calvary . . . what a privilege.

For me as a priest, one of the things that consoles me and helps me overcome my own fear of death is the thought that those people I anointed, and accompanied, and buried, will be praying for me and waiting to accompany me in the presence of the Father. I pray that, through the intercession of Mary who prays for us now and at the hour of our death, and through the intercession of Joseph who died in Jesus’ arms, that when I die, there will be a priest with me to anoint me and give me Viaticum.

You, my priests, are called Fathers . . . be sacraments of compassion to our people so that in your faithfulness and compassion, you make the love and mercy of our Heavenly Father present to our people, especially to the sick and dying who have a special claim on our love. You have been anointed to preach good news and to be good news. Use these oils we bless together to carry the Father’s mercy to our people in this "Year of the Father."

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