They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served,
while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him.
This banquet would seem to be an image of heaven, where those who serve Jesus gather around him to feast together with him. It is a banquet where those who, like Lazarus, were once dead but are now alive share a meal together with Jesus himself. And it is a meal that is Eucharistic, since we see gifts offered to the Lord in thanksgiving that prepare in some way for his Sacrifice.
Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil
made from genuine aromatic nard
and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair;
the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.
True love does not know how to measure or ration itself. It is not content to give by halves. It wants to bestow itself wholly on the beloved. For Mary, this was a response to how she knew herself to be first loved by Jesus. She realized that the entirety of Jesus' own life was a gift for humanity of which she was a privileged recipient. She sensed the truth that "he gives the Spirit without measure" (see John 3:34) and she, in turn, wanted to give herself without measure.
It is fitting to give all that we have and all that we are to the one who first poured out his life blood for us. Compared to his gift, our own is fractional such as to seem trivial. But it is not nothing. Jesus allows our gifts to be taken up into his own gift of self. We, like Mary, in some way, anoint the body of the Lord for his burial. And the result is this, that, "the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil". But our gift is not meant to be merely one expensive possession from our collection. Rather, we ourselves, are very lives, are meant to become this fragrance.
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere (see Second Corinthians 2:14).
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (see Ephesians 5:2).
But there is nothing that the ego likes less or fears more than this entire gift of self. If Mary's ego tried to stop her it seemed like she was too caught up in love to even notice let alone to slow down or change plans. But for us, like Judas, our egos tend to present love as a conflict of interest in a zero-sum game.
Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples,
and the one who would betray him, said,
"Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days' wages
and given to the poor?"
When we would pour out our life recklessly on Jesus in worship our ego would have us believe we should be doing something, anything else, perhaps some act of service for our neighbor. Yet when we do that other thing our ego always has some other option to present as what we ought to prefer. It is always trying to turn us from the moment where true love may be expressed to the merely hypothetical, keeping us trapped in analysis. It does seem, from a human level, that worship is a commitment that excludes other opportunities. But Jesus assures us that the way love works is different, that we will have every occasion to show love. If this is the case, we should do what love motivates in the particular situation at hand rather than looking for excuses to hold ourselves back.
So Jesus said, "Leave her alone.
Let her keep this for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
In a similar way, we might say that there are many other good opportunities for action in the world, but Holy Week is a unique and privileged time that we have only once a year. We should therefore make every effort to enter in with our whole hearts, to make of ourselves a gift of thanksgiving in response to all that Jesus has done for us. He is the gentle lover about whom Isaiah wrote:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
Upon whom I have put my Spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
Not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
Until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.
No comments:
Post a Comment