THE TRADITIONAL RITE OF EXTREME UNCTION--IT'S RICH COMPARED TO THE IMPOVERISHED RITE OF ANOINTING OF THE SICK

 

I am off this weekend. This Sunday morning, TCM has some great, intriguing movies. One such movie is the 1949 version of Madame Bovery. I had never seen it before. I won't go into the sordid plot and how wonderful movies of this era are so discreet in presenting sexual mortal sins as it concerns adultery and fornication. But after a marriage full of adultery, Madame Bovery who loves to live high on the hog and takes advantage of her handsome cohorts and they she, has lost everything she and her Dr. Milque Toaste-like husband have. Not able to convince those to whom she protistuted herself for her pleasure and for their material benifits, she commits a slow suicide by consuming arsenic without lace. As she lay dying her husband, Dr. Milque Toaste-like character, played by Van Heflin, calls a priest who offers her the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (the movie's setting is France).

 

I have not studied the Sacrament of Extreme Unction in the ancient rite, but what a shame our new rite has gutted it of so much richness that even Hollywood saw as powerful.

 

The anointing of the senses with the words that accompany it are powerful and are linked to the modern Cathecumenal Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Cathechumens. In that modern rite, the priest has the godparent to "Sign the Senses" in a very similar, but positive, virtuous way of the very senses that are anointed by the priest begging forgiveness to the sins these senses have provoked/tempted and experienced. 

 

Sad the the Ordinary Form of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is so banal capturing neither the imagination of those who experience or witness this Sacrament, let alone Hollywood. 

 

I have highlight in RED in the Traditional Rite below, the part where the priest anoints the sense. 

The Rite 

The priest takes the Oleum Infirmorum (the Oil of the Sick) and annoints the sick person in 6 places: eyelids ears nostrils lips hands feet As he annoints each place, he says the words below. After annointing each place, he wipes it with a piece of cotton.
Per istam sanctam Unctiónem + et suam piisimam misericórdiam, indúlgeat tibi Dóminus quidquid per (visum, audtiotum, odorátum, gustum et locutiónem, tactum, gressum deliquisti.)	By this holy unction + and his own most gracious mercy, may the Lord pardon you whatever sin you have committed by (sight, hearing, smell, taste and speech, touch, ability to walk).
R. Amen	R. Amen