Anointing of the Sick

Song of Songs 5:2-8

What voice called

when I lay silent on my bed?

Was it the voice of my Beloved,

soft as the thief who enters

when the light has fled;

come to break my lesser loves

from where they lay in jars

and by a sacred power

change the spilling oil–

the slow oil of suffering

into the shining oil of gladness

poured on my hands, dripping

against the handle of the lock?

O my Love, when will you come to me again?

I give you leave, destroy

the lamps and spill all

I had used for light, if in return

You give me only darkness

like this again, and call to me

again, Your lips pressed close

against the space in the door.

O my Love, when

will You come to me

again? O my Love,

when will you come

to me again? O

my Love, when will you

come to me again!

Guest Author Daniel Hyland is a husband and father living in the Shenandoah Valley near the top of Virginia. From 2011-2013 he attended L’Abri in Massachusetts and studied theology and philosophy at an Evangelical Christian college in Minnesota. He has since held a colorful assortment of jobs including bookshop clerk, line cook at a Southern bakery, public policy think tank writer, and professional ditch-digger. Daniel was raised a Presbyterian Christian; after five years of study and prayer, he was joyfully received into the Roman Catholic Church at the 2016 Easter Vigil and made his first communion.