As we enter the solemn liturgical season of Holy Week, the longer Gospel choice from Mark appointed for Palm Sunday this year includes several events that precede the Crucifixion. One of these events, which I find particularly moving, is the extravagant gesture that a nameless woman shows to Jesus as he prepares himself and his disciples to face the grueling days ahead of him.
In an act of pure love and kindness the woman pours an entire jar of costly perfume, which, by today’s fiscal standards, would be worth thousands of dollars, on Jesus’s head. I cannot help but wonder what prompted this woman to act with such generous devotion and kindness. Had she, perhaps, experienced the depth of the generosity and love of Jesus through his eyes, his words, his actions? Had her experience of his love prompted her to respond with whole-hearted devotion to him?
As we enter and journey through this Holy Week, I pray for our hearts and minds to be deeply enlightened and moved afresh as we revisit the enormous, the mind-boggling, the above-and-beyond-generous gift of new life Jesus has given us by his suffering, by his death like that of a criminal on a Roman cross, and especially by the depth of his life lived in perfect love.
“What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul, to lay aside his crown for my soul.” (Hymn 439)
Faithfully,
Photo: Detail from Meal at Simon’s House by Baron Carlo Marochetti (1843), a bas-relief from the antependium in the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Paris