The Oil of Gladness
Just as Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday serve as a kind of celebratory oasis during the lenten days, Great and Holy Wednesday, in the midst of Passion Week, has the same affect on me. Especially the evening Unction service. In our small Orthodox community in northwest Pennsylvania we always have a pan-Orthodox service at the small Greek Church in Farrell.
We were serving this evening and as one of the priests was reading the prayers I gazed upon the oil. There was nothing special about it, nothing holy, nothing other-worldly or powerful or mighty or any of that. It was just oil. And yet at the end of the service as the clergy put a drop of the sanctified oil in medicine bottles which we distribute to the people the Greek priest, Fr. Ignatios, will remind the people to be careful with it, to keep it in a safe place away from children, to use it only in time of need, etc. Regardless of how “normal” it looks, it’s holy oil.
What makes it holy? Surely it’s the prayers of the clergy, the prayers of the Church that has sanctified it; it’s the prayers we’ve read and the priest blessing it with each different prayer. It is certainly the very Word of God that we hear with each gospel reading that pours itself into the oil, making it the “oil of gladness”. But together with the sanctity of the oil goes, hand in hand, our faith and our piety and our fear of God. As Christ tells those that came to Him seeking healing, “your faith has made your well.”
Similarly this fast we are about to complete is powered not by how strictly we fasted, how many prostrations we did or any of that. It’s sanctified by our faith, our “contrite and humble heart”. Now we are fasting and abstaining but soon, at the Resurrection Matins, we will hear the homily of St. John Chrysostom when the one who has fasted from day one and the one who just started yesterday will receive the same prize. That’s the faith that moves mountains and turns everything holy.
May God shine His blessings upon us the remainder of these days of the fast and all of our days. Amen.
