The Deacon

What I understood about the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, and how deeply connected it is with the image of Christ the Servant, was dramatically impacted by my experiences leading up to the death of my father.

My dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given three months to live. I was actually in the room with him when the oncologist issued the prognosis. I happened to be visiting him and my mom in Florida while on business, and he’d asked me to take him to the doctor to get the results of testing after many weeks of a consistent cough.

As was his style, he tripled the prognosis and lived what were the last nine months of his life in my home in California, cared for by my mother and my wife and a number of hospice personnel, priests and holy religious sisters who visited him, prayed with him and encouraged him until the final day. And throughout his illness, he had recourse to the healing sacrament of anointing on a number of occasions.

The Final Days

Ten days before he died, he asked my mother, my wife and me to come into his room, and he began to talk about what I initially thought were nonsensical things. He opened by saying, “No matter what happens next, please remember, it’s still me.”

If I’m being frank, my first response to those words was a visceral sadness and disorientation at the thought that my dad, who had always been so sharp, lucid and clever — even in his sickness — was finally “losing it” as the disease progressed. I felt like a kid lost in a department store. My lifelong rudder was gone. My compass was broken.

Dad then proceeded to talk about things that were present as if they weren’t, and about things that weren’t present as if they were. He asked questions that had no relation to the topics we were discussing. He’d randomly move his head as if he were tracking the movement of objects in the room that remained invisible to the rest of us. He became eccentric; his behavior sometimes “normal” and at other times erratic and strange.

I empathized and made excuses for him: Perhaps he’d entered something akin to that strange psychological state between sleep and wakefulness?

I reasoned that even I could recall times I’d nodded off in the middle of a conversation with my wife, only to be awakened by a hot flash of embarrassment at the recognition that I’d said something completely incoherent, or other times as a young person when I’d woken myself up in the middle of the night because I was talking aloud nonsensically in a dream. Surely Dad was just experiencing something like that? Surely this eccentricity was just a side effect of his illness?

Eyes Fixed on Heaven

And yet Dad insisted, with real urgency, that we ensure that the “real him,” as he referred to himself, would not be forgotten. He asked us to help him not to give up. To pray for him. He thanked God over and over and over again. His gratitude overflowed. He reminded me of St. Dominic, who, according to his religious brothers, would talk only to God, or about God.

The TV never came back on (a desperate waste of time, he said). Dad tied a small wood crucifix, given him by my wife, around the drawstring of his sweatpants. He held a cross tightly in his fist — never putting it down, even when he ate or slept. His eyes gazed heavenward constantly. But there was also a strange tension I sensed in those final days. I couldn’t help but feel like he was bracing himself. Preparing himself for a battle.

Through reading and consulting with the hospice personnel that would visit our home, I began to learn more about the dying process. What I found was that experiences of an “altered state” close to death were actually very common.

The scientific literature was satisfied to explain it away as merely a chemical thing: a curious artifact of biology. As the body begins to shut down there’s new activity in the brain that causes “disorientation.” That was all. Open and shut.

But I, as a Christian, had to harmonize the physical realities with the spiritual ones. All of us are both body and soul. And I knew that in the spiritual dimension my father’s soul was beginning to interact with the nonmaterial realm. The other side. As the eyes of his body dimmed, he was beginning to see with the eyes of his soul. He was beginning to cross over.

Protected in Weakness

It was during this time that my dad especially sought out, and benefited from, the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Though he never said it, I knew he was dealing with terrible pain from the cancer in his bones and lungs, discomfort from the hours upon hours of sitting and lying down, embarrassment from having his nakedness constantly wiped and cleaned.

He was the most vulnerable he’d ever be, the most like a child, the most weak, and it was at this moment, when he was closest to the suffering of the cross, that the devil, sensing his final opportunity no doubt, tried hardest to tempt him; to have him lose hope, to have him get angry at his caretakers, to despise his sorry state, to hate, to doubt, to demand that Jesus make things different, to go into the eternal moment angry with God.

But the anointing protected him. The chrism oil covered him. And he was defended. And it helped to comfort him. He never complained. Nor did he get angry about his bed sores or nakedness. He smiled — sometimes coyly because he didn’t understand what we were saying, but he smiled. He thanked the priests. He kissed their hands. They kissed his.

Healer and Servant

Twenty-four hours before he died, he received a final anointing, a final absolution. After that he never spoke again. His battle with the enemy continued in silence, but the sacrament worked in his heart. In silence.

I was reading the Book of Revelation to him when he died. I was sharing the passage about the white amulet we will all receive in heaven (Rv 2:17), the amulet that has our real names, our deepest, truest name, engraved upon it — the name that only God knows.

And moments later, seconds after I left his bedside, he was gone.

In my discernment, training and study during formation, and in my life and ministry as a deacon in the present day, I’ve come across many things which when seen through the eyes of service reveal the fullness of what they are — anointing is no different.

The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is above all animated by God’s desire to heal his people — and healing, true healing, happens only when we make ourselves entirely open and available to serve.

Anointing is about meeting and ministering to a brother or sister, often in the most difficult moments, in the most painful moments, in the final moments.

And that’s the kind of thing best done by a servant.

DEACON CHARLIE ECHEVERRY serves at St. Mark Parish in Venice, California. He also preaches and speaks throughout the country and is the host of the podcast “Living the CALL.”