That synod on the laity expired quietly on Friday October 30 unloved, unmourned, largely unreported. Most of those who were inside put on a brave front, tried to salvage something from the wreckage, and claimed to have had an intense experience of ‘affective collegiality’. This is the warm glow that comes from brothers (and a few sisters) celebrating their unity, and hugging it to themselves. It is contrasted with ‘effective collegiality’, in which Pope and bishops combine to get things done. So far this pontificate has been stronger on affective than effective collegiality.

Archbishop Roger Mahoney gave the game away in a casual remark as he departed, early, for Los Angeles: ‘It doesn’t matter what the Synod is about, what matters is that it should meet.’ Mahoney was a papal nominee at the Synod, so he probably is privy to the mind of the Pope. But what contempt this remark reveals for the laity who in some countries were extensively consulted in advance of the Synod. The four bishops from the United States, for example, held elaborate and costly meetings involving over 200,000 laypeople. Their speeches to the Synod in the first week faithfully reflected what they had heard. They had done what the Synod Secretariat told them to do: consulted. The results of their consultation were spurned, mocked, one could almost say.

In November 1869 Father Charles Meynell, professor of philosophy at Oscott, finished reading the proofs of the Grammar of Assent. Returning them to Newman, he wrote: ‘Well, I have learnt a great deal from you: I had no notion that an inference was such a leaky sort of thing!’.

An article in The Guardian in November last year described Highgate cemetery as ‘the last resting place of 166,400 souls’ (italics mine, needless to say).

Recently an elderly friend of mine remarked that the trouble about getting old is that the body wears out while the mind stays bright as a child’s. If pressed (somewhat pedantically) she would readily have agreed that the trouble is really that parts of the body wear out while the brain part of the body does not.

Sometimes we use soul for the whole of a person (‘there is not a soul left behind’). Sometimes we use body for the whole (as in ‘anybody’ or ‘somebody’). Other times we use these words as opposite parts (‘keeping body and soul together’).

The ambiguity of our language betrays our uncertainty about who or what we really are. We have many implicit models as to what body is, and it is a mistake to try to tidy up the ambiguity or opt for a single model.

There are two main ideas, or models. One is that my body is a thing I have. The other is of body as a mode of being which I am.

Given on 30 June 1987 in South-East London, at the Church of St Thomas More, Bexley Heath, in a service of healing held during a Dominican-led parish mission.

Here, tonight, we are going to perform one of the most ancient ceremonies of the Church. The Letter of St. James was written perhaps only twenty or thirty years after the death and resurrection of our Lord, and we shall be anointing and praying over the sick of this parish in an almost identical way to that described there:

Is there any among you that are sick?
Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.
(5:14)

Oil in the ancient world was a very precious commodity. It was used in cooking, as it still is today, but also for washing, as there was no soap in the ancient world. And it was used as medicine. It was rubbed into the body and it was drunk.

The liturgical use of anointing in the church has a long history and has varied a lot over the centuries. At some periods sick people or their friends went to the church to collect the blessed oil and they would anoint themselves or get others to do it for them if they were too ill. But for a long while and in fact until very recently this sacrament was thought of chiefly as the sacrament of the death bed—‘extreme unction’.