Word: sacramental
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...people of Israel, like the old, are quite prepared to face a hostile world all by themselves. One factor that unites the generations is a profound conviction-to some, perhaps, a substitute for religious faith-that their nation will survive, no matter what. Survival is the Jewish sacrament. Even the secular-minded are compelled to regard Jewish survival through millenniums of repeated exodus and holocaust as one of history's miracles. Israel is that miracle's latest and perhaps most remarkable incarnation...
...real life as well as in countless novels, plays and films, the arrival of a priest to administer the Roman Catholic sacrament of extreme unction has long had an ominous meaning: the patient was virtually given up for dead. Those whose condition was not in fact so grave could be given a nasty turn by the sight of the priest with his vial of holy oil. Now Pope Paul VI has changed all that. The sacrament, called "the anointing of the sick" since Vatican II, will hereafter be used not only for those who are in imminent danger of death...
Vatican liturgists pointed out that other changes, though seemingly minor, reduce the sometimes frightening "cloak of magic" that has surrounded the sacrament. The rite will no longer be given to persons who have died before the priest arrives, because the church now emphasizes that the recipient should have a positive faith in the sacrament's grace. Says liturgical expert Father Secondo Mazzarello: "The aim now is to comfort the sick person. Pain and sickness are seen as the problems of the entire man, body and soul together. The new rite gets away from the Platonic concept, which for centuries...
Henceforth, the recipients of the anointing may even take their comfort communally. One change provides for the administering of the sacrament to "great gatherings of the faithful" during a Mass-for sick pilgrims at Lourdes, say, or patients in a hospital...
...pickets marched before the White House, chanting demands that Richard Nixon sign a peace agreement immediately?in perhaps the last sacrament of the sidewalk institution of protest?the dusk slowly faded and an autumn moon rose over the Executive Mansion. The White House lights came on in melancholy beauty, highlighting a glistening new coat of paint applied for the Inauguration of the next President, whose term will embrace the bicentennial celebration of the Republic. Maybe tranquillity of one kind or another is to be the reward for two centuries of survival. But life will be different in the old mansion...