A touching holy oil testimony

[RogerChristie]

Hello friends,

Aloha. Happy holy-days to you!

This article reminds me of the privilege that has been bestowed upon each of us who chooses to be blessed by holy oil made with Cannabis, and then to make it with love. We get to literally put our prayers INTO the oil which then gets to help comfort the sick and dying. How amazing is that?

This article touched me with the writer's sincerity, and yet the holy oil described here is most likely NOT made with the authentic kaneh bosm recipe. How happy will be the articles soon to come as kaneh bosm is discovered to be Cannabis!

I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to comfort a loved one, a friend, or a 'stranger' with holy anointing oil and your prayer. It's a sacred service of love and caring that can be a truly wonderful experience in your personal ministry.

I wonder how many of you know of the healing available with holy anointing oil? I wonder how many of you have made it? I wonder how many of you have anointed the sick? I wonder how many of you have anointed the dying? It is sacred service of the Most High. Imagine ...

Love and respect,

Roger

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http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/faith/12/16/16FLYNN.html

FLYNN FAITH COLUMN

My mother, faithful

Heart attack reminds us of her pious life.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

When the priest came, I noticed a trace of blood on his lower lip. He wore brown slacks and his voice was barely audible.

I had expected a warm, ruddy-faced Irishman, a Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan type. Father Tony was a diminutive African who spoke in halting English. We, my father, the priest and I, walked silently down the sterile corridor of the cardiac intensive care unit and into the room where my mother lay near death. Where Father Tony conducted the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, commonly known as the last rites.

As a religion writer, I encounter testaments of faith all the time. People who submit to a divine power, who don't question hardship when it befalls them, who trust in an afterlife and strive to do good during their time on earth. I know other people who chalk religion up to recycled mythology, a tool we created to satisfy our narcissism and appease our fear of death.

Both kinds of people populate my family. But I've never witnessed a stronger faith than my mother's. She was educated by the sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary and by the Jesuit priests at Loyola University in Chicago. She remained in touch with the saints and the mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church. When her own mother died — young and unexpectedly — she whispered an Act of Contrition in her ear. She believed in Heaven and in the family reunion she would one day have there with her parents and brother and her beloved aunts and uncles. She believed they watched over her, over all of her six children.

It's hard when you struggle to believe those things. When you're not sure what lies in store for you after death, if anything awaits you. I remember asking my mother a few years ago if she really believed in Heaven. "Oh, yes," she replied.

That's not to say that she was an empty-headed follower. She complained when her cathedral in Chicago was a victim of a modern makeover. She didn't suffer fools, whether they wore a collar or not. And more recently, she expressed her disappointment in the church's coverup of sexually abusive priests.

But she still kept a worn Catholic missal by her bedside, still counted on the power of prayer and boasted of her father's years as head usher at Holy Name Cathedral. And just as she found comfort in her faith, she used it to comfort us when we experienced dark nights of the soul. As my brother Chris said, "Mother is the sun in the family." Even now, we feel her warmth.

A massive heart attack the day after Thanksgiving landed her at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. On Dec. 4, when, after 11 days, she emerged from the fog of the sedatives and the discomfort of the breathing tube, she spoke of Heaven and the people she would have to answer to. That night, she suffered another heart attack and the doctors gave us a grim prognosis.

They stunned us with words: "20 percent chance" and "withdrawal of care" and "grave." Under the crippling weight of sadness and sleeplessness, we moved back and forth from her bedside to the waiting room. My dad kept telling doctors how courageous Mother is, how she wasn't afraid to face death. That's the promise of Heaven, I thought, though I suppose none of us knows what's really going on in the mind of someone who can't communicate because of drugs and tubes.

On Dec. 5, Father Tony walked from one side of the bed to the other, marking my mother's forehead and wrists with oil. His thin voice released the words like a song, "Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up."

I don't know if by the time you read this column my mother will be among the living or the dead. I don't know if Heaven is a reality. But it doesn't trouble me now. Faith is so real for my mother, it is big enough for both of us.

Father Tony, in his quiet, unexpected way, helped me feel it that morning: a penetrating peace, a ritual that could yank your heart into your throat, and a comfort that — Heaven or not — could sustain you in the bitter absence of life.

eflynn@statesman.com; 445-3812

* Your Words *

The 'Your Words' features, which alternate with Eileen Flynn's columns, are composed of 700-word stories contributed by our readers and area clerics. Send yours to mbarnes@ statesman.com.


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