Individual Bedside Rite, or Whole Congregation Together

Catholic practice administers this sacrament to one sick person at a time, typically at a bedside or in a private setting suited to that individual's illness, a pattern of individual, occasion by occasion administration that has remained the norm even as the sacrament's theology has shifted to encourage offering it more readily to anyone facing serious illness rather than reserving it for the point of death.

Eastern Orthodox tradition observes the same underlying anointing, known there as holy unction or by the Greek term euchelaion, but has historically also given it a distinctly communal form largely without a Western equivalent: many Orthodox parishes hold a general service of holy unction for the whole gathered congregation together, most characteristically on the Wednesday of Holy Week, at which all present, not only those currently seriously ill, come forward to be anointed as part of the parish's shared preparation for Pascha, treating the sacrament as a corporate act of the assembled church addressing sin and infirmity broadly rather than only as a rite for a specific sick individual. This communal Holy Wednesday unction sits alongside, rather than replacing, the more individual anointing an Orthodox priest will also perform for a particular sick or dying person on request, so Orthodox practice maintains both the individual and communal forms side by side in a way Western Catholic practice, centered almost entirely on individual administration, generally does not.