For a long time Catholic families waited. They called the priest when the breathing had already changed. The Church herself had taught them that habit. She called the sacrament Extreme Unction — the last anointing — and the name did some of the damage.
St James never wrote a funeral instruction. He wrote to ordinary churches: is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The Lord will raise him up. Sins will be forgiven. In 1972 the Church recovered that earlier timing. The oil is for serious illness, for frailty, for the morning before an operation. It may be given more than once. It may be given when the mind has gone ahead of the words.
This little book walks through what the priest actually does with the small steel stock and the cotton, how Confession and Viaticum sit beside the oil, and why a parish that only anoints in secret will go on thinking the sacrament is a secret about death. Read it before anyone in the house is ill. The best time to learn this sacrament is while everyone can still walk to the door.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.