In today’s gospel at Mass [John 12:1-11], Jesus is at the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary six days before the Passover. During the meal, Mary will anoint Jesus’ feet with costly perfume most likely imported from India. One purpose for Jesus’ presence in Bethany is possible to prepare for the upcoming Passover. Jesus was an observant Jewish man. He said in the Sermon on the Mount that He came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. About fulfilling the law, one author stated: “The very ubiquity of death in the ancient world suggested that most Jews lived their lives in a state of ritual impurity, only reestablishing their purity at the time of the ritual celebrations when they approached the Temple and its altar. The ritual required a week of preparation, with bathing in water containing the ashes of the purity offering, often translated poorly as the ‘sin offering,’ on the first, third, and seventh day…. Jesus’ early arrival is a subtle indication that he was observant of the rituals required by the Torah (Numbers 19:14-19)
Mary’s gesture of anointing manifests love’s different forms: love’s extravagance (costly perfume); love’s humility; and love’s lack of self-concern (drying Jesus’ feet with her hair). These qualities of love will be the same that Jesus will show to us during Holy Week:
1. Jesus’ extravagant love is manifested by His cross (there is no love greater that laying down one’s life for one’s friends – John 15:13);
2. Jesus’ humility was proclaimed during the second reading at Mass on Palm Sunday. I would encourage you to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2:5-11. Saint Augustine in a reflection on Psalm 85 wrote of Jesus’ humility, “Our thoughts must then be awakened to keep their vigil of faith. We must realize that the one whom we were contemplating a short time before in his nature as God took to himself the nature of a servant; he was made in the likeness of men and found to be a man like others; he humbled himself by being obedient even to accepting death; as he hung on the cross he made the psalmist’s words his own: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
3. Jesus manifests his lack of self-concern during His crucifixion in the passion narrative in various ways. In John’s gospel, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." In Luke’s gospel, “Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
Love’s extravagance, love’s humility, love’s lack of self-concern. Do these qualities describe how love is manifested in our lives?
Rolheiser Prayer Our Deepest Longing
Fr. Roland Rolheiser is an author that, I find, has a wonderful spirituality that speaks to our current age. I would encourage you to read some of his books. Recently I was given his book on prayer, Prayer Our Deepest Longing, that I will try to read during Holy Week. Early in the book he provides an interesting commentary on our distractions. This week is one of the most important, if not THE most important, week of our church calendar year. In the past, with work and other obligations, we might not have entered fully into the different liturgical celebrations and devotional practices that highlight the week. This year with the pandemic many of those distractions aren’t calling us away from the awesomeness of Holy Week – our savior, Jesus Christ, offers his life for us. Death is not the end of the story, because, as we know, on the third day, He rose from the grave. Death, our greatest enemy, has been vanquished. Our baptism has made us sharers in that victory. Holy Week is when we focus on this gift and the giver of this gift, Jesus Christ.
I would like to share with you Fr. Rolheiser’s remarks regarding A Conspiracy Against Interiority:
Our culture is a powerful narcotic, for good and for bad. It is important that we first underline that there’s partly a good side to this. A narcotic soothes and protects against brute, raw pain. Our culture has within it every kind of thing (from medicine to entrainment) to shield us form suffering. That can be good, but a narcotic also can be bad, especially when it becomes a way of reality. Where our culture is particularly dangerous, I feel, is in the way it can perpetually shield us from having to face the deeper issues of life: faith, forgiveness, morality, and mortality. It can constitute, as theologian Jan Walgrave has said, ‘a virtual conspiracy’ against the interior life by keeping us so entertained, so busy, so preoccupied, and so distracted that we lose all focus on the deeper things.
We live in a world of instant and constant communication, of mobile phones and e-mail, of iPods that contain whole libraries of music, of television packages that contain hundreds of channels, of malls and stores that are open twenty-four hours a day, of restaurants and clubs that stay open all night, of sounds that never die and lights that never go out. We can be amused, distracted, and catered to at any time.
While that has made our lives wonderfully efficient, it also has conspired against depth. The danger, as one commentator puts it, is that we are all developing permanent attention deficit disorder. We are attentive to so many things that, ultimately, we aren’t attentive to anything, particularly to what is deepest inside of us.
Typically our day is so full (of work, noise, pressure, rush) that when we do finally get home and have some time when we could shut down all the stimulation, we are so fatigued that what soothes us is something that functions as a narcotic: a sporting event, a game show on television, a mindless sitcom, or anything that can calm our tensions and relax us enough to sleep. It’s not bad if we do this on a given night, but it is bad when we do it every night.
What happens is that we never find the space in our lives to touch what is deepest inside of us and inside of others. Given the power of our culture, we can go along like this for years until something cracks in our lives – a loved one dies, someone breaks our heart, the doctor tells us we have a terminal illness – or some other crisis (?coronavirus?) suddenly renders empty all the stimulation and entertainment in the world. Then we are forced to look into our own depth, and that can be a frightening abyss if we have years avoiding it.
Sometimes we need a narcotic. But we have to know it is time to unplug the television, turn off the phone, shut down the computer, silence the iPod, lay away the sports page, and resist going our for coffee with a friend, so that, for one moment at least, we are not avoiding making friends with that one part of us, the deepest part, that someday will accompany us into the sunset.
The season of Lent will end this coming Wednesday. The following three days are what is called the Triduum. Three days of one long celebration, Jesus’ Paschal Mystery. Normally Mass begins and ends with the sign of the cross. The Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday starts, as usual, with the sign of the cross but does not end with this sign of our salvation. It will be at the end of the Mass at the Easter Vigil that we will once again make the sign of the cross. The Triduum – 3 days of one celebration. On Good Friday, the service of the veneration of the cross will begin in silence with the priest prostrating himself before the altar and then continuing with the celebration that began the night before. The liturgy of Holy Thursday will continue on Saturday at the Easter vigil with the lighting the Paschal candle and end late on Saturday night with the sign of the cross.
My prayer is that Holy Week during this coronavirus-crazy time will be unlike others in the past. Yes, we won’t be able to gather at church on Easter Sunday. But, unlike any other year, many of our distractions are gone. Shopping, visiting with friends, work, etc. Let’s really enter this week into the mystery of our salvation so that Easter is a joyous “Alleluia” celebration of not only Jesus’ resurrection but also ours!
Fr. Benedict Groeschel in his book, The King, Crucified and Risen, offers us a challenge to truly make Holy Week a different experience. In his reflection of Mary, the brother of Lazarus, who anointed Jesus’ feet for burial [John 12:3], Fr. Groeschel wrote the following:
The stage is being set for the drama of the ages, not a play but a reality that will forever affect the destiny of every human being. The believing Christian will want to move through the history of the Passion in a most attentive way. This requires some work. Life goes on with its many distractions…. [We] should make a resolution not only to pay careful attention to the biblical accounts but also to live through these days as best we can by penance and prayer. The somber Gospel narrative summons each of us to focus our attention not only on the great evets – the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and Christ rising from the dead – but also on the details.
In the past, religious artists focused on each detail. On older altars we can still find symbols of the cock that crowed on Friday morning, the dice of the executioners who gambled for Jesus’ clothes, and nails of the Crucifixion. These objects, as well as every word spoken – from the words of Jesus to the cynical remarks of Pilate – all provide food for meditation.
Since the death of Christ, more than one hundred thousand weeks have one by, and all of them together have never had the significance of that Passion Week so long ago. Sone have lived through Holy Week with loving attention of John; others have been like some of the citizens of Jerusalem, wondering why the sun had become dark at noon.
Have you ever really tried to take the daily Scripture readings and the four Gospel accounts of the Passion as your guide through these events, which are the cornerstone of salvation history? We are invited to experience this week with a hauntingly beautiful Marian hymn, in which the mother of Christ implores us:
Oh, come and mourn with me awhile!
See, Mary calls us to her side;
Oh, come and let us mourn with her;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified!