Mystagogic Catechesis 3: Concerning The Anointing With Chrism
MYSTAGOGIC CATECHESIS 3: Concerning the anointing with chrism
Reading: 1 Jn 2.20–8: ‘And you have received the anointing from God and know everything…’
1 Now that you have been baptized and have put on Christ, you have been shaped to the likeness of the Son of God. For when God predestined us for adoption, he shaped us to the likeness of Christ's glorious body. So now that you have shared in Christ, you are correctly called ‘christs’ [anointed ones], so that God's words ‘Do not touch my christs’ applies to you (Ps 104 (105).15). You have become christs now that you have received the sacramental sign of the Holy Spirit. Since you are images of Christ, everything which was done to you has a symbolic meaning.
When Christ had washed in the River Jordan and shared the touch of his divinity with the waters, he came up from them, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in substantial form, like resting upon like. So too when you came up from the holy waters of the font your anointing took place, the sacramental sign of the anointing which Christ received. This anointing is the Holy Spirit, concerning whom blessed Isaiah spoke in the person of Christ in his prophecy concerning him: ‘The Holy Spirit has come upon me; that is why he has anointed me and sent me to announce the good news to the poor’ (Is 61.1).
2 Christ did not receive a human anointing with bodily olive-oil or muron; it was the Father who anointed him with the Holy Spirit in proclaiming him Saviour of the whole world. Thus Peter spoke of ‘Jesus of Narareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 10.38), and the prophet David proclaimed: ‘Your throne, O God, lasts from age to age; the sceptre of your kingdom is a rod of righteousness. You have loved justice and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows’ (Ps 44.7–8 (45.6–7)).
Just as Christ was truly crucified and buried and rose again, while you are privileged in baptism to be crucified, to be buried and to rise again with him in likeness, so it is with the anointing with chrism. He was anointed with the spiritual ‘oil of gladness’, that is, with the Holy Spirit, which is called the oil of gladness because it causes spiritual gladness; you were anointed with muron and became partners with Christ and began to share with him.
3 Beware of imagining that this is ordinary ointment. For just as after the invocation of the Holy Spirit the bread of the Eucharist is no longer ordinary bread but the body of Christ, so too with the invocation this holy muron is no longer ordinary or, so to say, common ointment, but Christ's grace which imparts to us his own divinity through the presence of the Holy Spirit. To symbolize this truth you are anointed on your forehead and on your other senses. Your body is anointed with visible muron, while your soul is sanctified by the life-giving Spirit.
4 First you are anointed on the forehead so as to be released from the shame which the first sinner carried around everywhere, and to reflect the glory of the Lord with face unveiled (cf. Exod 34.29; 2 Cor 3.18). Next you are anointed on the ears, so as to be given the ears spoken of by Isaiah (50.4 (LXX)): ‘And the Lord has given me an ear to hear’, and by the Lord in the Gospels: ‘He that has ears to hear, let him hear’ (Mt 11.15). Next you are anointed on the nostrils, so that you may say, if you retain the sacred muron: ‘We are Christ's sweet fragrance before God among those who are saved’ (2 Cor 2.15). After this you are anointed on your breast, so that you may ‘put on the breastplate of righteousness’, and stand firm against ‘the devil's wiles’ (Eph 6.14, 11). For just as the Saviour went out and defeated his adversary after his baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit, so too once you have been baptized and received the mystical anointing and put on the armour of the Holy Spirit, you have to stand against the power ranged against you and defeat it. For you can say: ‘I can do all things in Christ who empowers me’ (Phil 4.13).
5 Now that you have received the privilege of this holy anointing, you are called Christians, a name which truly reflects your birth. For before you were admitted to baptism and the grace of the Holy Spirit you had not properly qualified for the name though you were on the way to becoming Christians.
6 You must understand that the symbolic explanation of this anointing with chrism is to be found in the Old Testament. For when Moses passed God's command on to his brother and installed him as high priest, he first made him bathe and then anointed him. Thus he was called the ‘christ’ —a word derived from the anointing. So too when the high priest made Solomon king, he anointed him after making him bathe in the Gihon (1 Kings 1.38–9). These rites were performed for them as a prefiguration, but for you not as a prefiguration but in reality, because your salvation began with the one who was anointed in reality by the Holy Spirit. For he is truly the firstfruits and you are the whole lump (cf. Rom 11.16); if the firstfruits are holy, it is clear that the holiness will spread to the whole lump.
7 Preserve this anointing unstained, for it will teach you everything if it remains in you, as you have just heard blessed John saying in the course of his many reflections on the anointing with chrism. For this sacred gift is the spiritual protection for your body and salvation for your soul.
Long ago in ancient times blessed Isaiah proclaimed this prophecy: ‘And the Lord will do this for all the nations on the mountain’ (by the ‘mountain’ he means the Church both here and in other places, as when he says: ‘And in the last days the Lord's mountain will be revealed’ (Is 2.2 (LXX)). ‘They will drink wine, they will drink gladness, they will be anointed with muron.’ And to assure you that you are being told about this muron in a mystic sense he continues: ‘Pass all these things on to the nations, for the Lord's decree applies to all the nations.’
Now that you have been anointed with this holy muron, keep it pure and spotless within yourselves by making progress in good works and becoming pleasing to the ‘pioneer of your salvation’ (Heb 2.10), Christ Jesus, to whom is the glory for ever and ever. Amen.