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.