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Summary
- Plain olive oil can be blessed with a short prayer before anointing a sick person, a child, oneself or a new home.
- Traditional prayers over oil are quoted from the Orthodox service of Holy Unction, the Orthodox vigil blessing of bread, wheat, wine and oil, the Roman Ritual’s “Benedictio olei” and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s “Unction of the Sick.”
- At the Orthodox vigil the priest marks each person’s forehead with a cross in oil blessed at Vespers, a blessing distinct from the sacrament of Holy Unction.
- James 5:14–15 tells the sick to call the elders of the church to pray over them, “anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord”; in Catholic teaching only priests give the Anointing of the Sick (Catechism 1516).
- Exodus 30 gives the recipe for the tabernacle’s holy anointing oil and forbids copying it for ordinary use (Exodus 30:32).
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 28:18; Exodus 30:23–25, 32; 40:9; Leviticus 8:12; 1 Samuel 16:13; Psalm 23:5; Mark 6:13; Luke 10:34; John 1:41; 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; James 5:14–15). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Great Vespers, p. 13; The Office of Holy Unction, pp. 341–342; The Office Used at the Founding of a Church, p. 484; Appendix B, Matins, note 9, p. 595. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Rituale Romanum, typical Vatican edition approved by Pius XI, 1925. Title VIII, chapter 19, “Benedictio olei” (Laudate Dominum reprint, p. 200), and “Benedictio domorum” (pp. 190–191). https://www.liturgia.it/content/ritrom.pdf
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Visitation of the Sick, “Unction of the Sick,” p. 320. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraphs 1293, 1516 and 1519. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3R.HTM ; https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4L.HTM ; https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4M.HTM
- Baglai, Kirill. “Освященное масло: чем отличаются Миропомазание, Елеосвящение и Елеопомазание” (Blessed oil: how Chrismation, Unction and the vigil anointing differ). Foma. https://foma.ru/osvyashhennoe-maslo-chem-otlichayutsya-miropomazanie-eleosvyashhenie-i-eleopomazanie.html
