If you are a parish priest and one of your parishoners is gravely sick or injured and close to death, as part of Last Rites, can you administer a little drop of the Precious Blood to that person, similar to how it is done with an infant? Does a person have to be conscious to recieve in such a circumstance?

I am writing a new book and this is the scenario I am dealing with and I don't want to make a theological hash of this part.

Thanks in advance!

If you are talking eastern churches, last rites in the Roman sense are not part of the tradition, nor is administration in one kind.

Okay. This is what I am trying to discern. We share the same 7 Sacraments, right? Therefore, there is something we have akin to the Last Rites of the Roman rite. What is it called?

As for communion under one species, we do that with infants all the time. They get a drop of the precious Blood on their lips, right?

Anointing of the Sick. Which is what it's called in the Latin Church, too--though, prior to Vatican II, they had gotten in the habit of only administering it to the dead and dying. Now, there is a movement to administer it more widely for the healing of soul and body, just as we do.

This is one of these areas where you ask the Orthodox about communion under one species and they say "no, we've never done it"...except that they do. More conservative priests will administer at least a crumb to infants (including the priest in my parish).

I know of one situation where a priest was attempting to take some wine from the chalice to take the sick and the rector of the Church expressly forbade it unless he took some of the bread as well.

Christ is in our midst!!

I accompanied an Orthodox priest when he took the Holy Mysteries to a shut-in parishioner some years ago. He took one of the particles from the Reserved Mysteries and took unconsecrated wine a tiny bottle that was placed inside the vessel (looked like a tiny tabernalce) used to carry the Lord. There was a separate little box for the Holy Gifts and a spoon.) I was told that the wine would be consecrated, as it is during the Presanctified DL, by contact with the portion of the Reserved Holy Gifts. I thought that was the way that the Holy gifts were carried to the sick.

Bob

We only have Divine Liturgy every other week so this was our week at our Roman Catholic parish. Right before the consecration an elderly lady in a pew a few rows from the front of the church collapsed. Our priest stopped the mass and administered the Anointing of the Sick to the woman while we waited for the EMS to arrive. The entire congregation of about 500 assisted in the Anointing of the Sick. Quite a profound movement. After the woman was taken out by EMS the priest completed the mass.

At this parish a healing service where the sick are anointed is held each month. My wife who is having knee surgery this week was anointed by the priest at the parish where she volunteers. It is becoming quite common in Roman parishes to anoint the sick and the sacrament is not seen as the last rites in the parishes I am familiar with.

A Lutheran perspective, if you will indulge:

We never abandoned the doctrine of concomitance, even though our confessional writings forbid the witholding of the cup from the laity.

Many years ago I had an elderly parishioner who had suffered a debilitating stroke and whose sole nourishment was through a feeding tube. Her husband suggested that I use a sponge swab of the sort used to clean her mouth to administer the Precious Blood; and he understood fully that such a swab would be used only for that purpose.

After her death, he gave me the remaining supply of individually wrapped swabs. Quite fortunately I have only had to use one, and that was to administer a final Communion to an elderly lady who in her better years never missed a liturgy. The Consecration had occurred less than an hour before at the Sunday liturgy and she reposed later that evening.

By the way, one of the contributions of Lutherans to the Western Rite is the singing of the Song of Simeon "Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace" after Communion (at the same point as "we have seen the true light"). Sometimes this Nunc dimittis is more poignant than others.

Pastor Thomas,

Greetings from Luther-land (Gettysburg...)

Indeed we can place a drop of the Precious Blood perhaps from a finger or from the linen purificator to the lips of the person in the hospital, even when unconscious.

Now, it takes some doing, and I've only witnessed it once, and it was in the context of a Mass.

In my first year out of the seminary, one of my former professors was dying from cancer. He was the giant at the Mount. I had the blessing of bringing him Holy Communion most every morning until he died. The day he died, I was visiting him in the ECU - he was unconscious. The vice-rector of the seminary arrived with a Mass kit. I asked my former superior if I could serve his Mass. In the middle of the Mass, another of the seminary priests came in. At the time for Holy Communion I witnessed the celebrant dip the purificator into the chalice and touch the Precious Blood to Fr. Z's tongue. I'll never forget that. He died a few hours later.

I think that there MAY be a provision to place the Precious Blood in a vial of some sort and bring the Eucharist from the church to the hospital or nursing home. I've never witnessed that, however.