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Viaticum is a term used – especially in theCatholic Church – for theEucharist (also called Holy Communion), administered, with or withoutAnointing of the Sick (also called Extreme Unction), to a person who is dying; viaticum is thus a part of theLast Rites.
The wordviaticum is aLatin word meaning "provision for a journey", fromvia, or "way". Alternatively,viaticum can refer to anancient Roman provision or allowance for traveling, originally of transportation and supplies, later of money, made to officials on public missions; mostly simply, the word, ahaplology ofviā tēcum ("with you on the way"), indicates money or necessities for any journey.Viaticum can also refer to the enlistment bonus received by a Romanlegionary,auxiliary soldier or seaman in the RomanImperial Navy.
For Communion as Viaticum, the Eucharist is given in its usual form, with the added words "May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life". The Eucharist is seen as the ideal spiritual food to strengthen a dying person for the journey from this world to life after death. The desire to have the bread and wine consecrated in the Eucharist available for the sick and dying led to the reservation of theBlessed Sacrament, a practice which has endured from the earliest days of theChristian Church.Saint Justin Martyr, writing less than fifty years after the death ofSaint John the Apostle, mentions that "thedeacons communicate each of those present, and carry away to the absent the consecrated Bread, and wine and water".[1]
If the dying person cannot take solid food, the Eucharist may be administered via thewine alone, since the Catholic Church holds that Christexists in his entirety (body, blood, soul, and divinity) in both the consecrated solid and liquid elements.
The sacrament ofExtreme Unction is often administered immediately before giving Viaticum if apriest is available to do so. Unlike the Anointing of the Sick, Viaticum may be administered by a priest,deacon or by anextraordinary minister, using thereserved Blessed Sacrament. The rite prescribed by theSecond Vatican Council provides for a continuous action in which the sick person is anointed after theirconfession and before they receive viaticum.[2]
InLate Antiquity and theEarly Mediaeval period in the West, thehost was sometimes placed in the mouth of a person already dead. Some claim that this could relate to a traditional practice[3] which scholars have compared to the pre-Christian custom ofCharon's obol, a small coin placed in the mouth of the dead for passage to the afterlife and sometimes also called aviaticum in Latin literary sources.[4]