Mary of Bethany washes the feet of Jesus on the Saturday evening before Palm Sunday When the Lord Jesus returns to the house of his friends in Bethany seven days after the resurrection of Lazarus, Mary anoints his feet with ointment and wipes them with her hair. The place is agog with controversy. A dead man is giving a dinner for the Gallilean who performs great signs that he is from God. Judas is outraged at the waste of money. Jesus defends her action by saying that she has anointed him for his impending death. Imagine the expectations of the neighbors and the friends who have seen Lazarus dead and then see him walking around. Imagine the fears of the Jerusalem establishment who have been inundated all week with stories of the Raising of the dead man. Only a week before, this Galillean had given sight to a man born blind. Now he appeared to have the power to raise the dead. Their spies crowded as close to the house as they could and asked many questions, so that they could take their stories back to the enemies of Jesus. Tension is everywhere, many people afraid to ask Jesus what he intended to do. Would he enter Jerusalem? Would he attempt to lead a rebellion based on the fame of his miracles? Expectations were high that Jesus was the promised Son of David and that he would save Israel from her enemy, the Romans. On this Saturday, Jesus eats with his friends and their guests in Bethany, only two miles from the gates of Jerusalem. On the following day, he would mount a cold and ride into the city to the acclamations Hosanna, of his followers. But for this evening, the meal becomes the place where mystery and grace are to be signified in word and in actions. Anoint Jesus’ feet: by living well, follow the Lord’s footsteps. Wipe with your hair: if you have more than enough, give to the poor and you have wiped the Lord’s feet. For hairs seem to be the body’s superfluity. For you they are superfluous, but for the Lord’s feet, they are necessary. Perhaps on earth the Lord’s feet are in need. For about whom but his members would he say; “Such as you do for these, the least of my little ones, you do also to me.” (Matt. 25: 40) You spent your superfluity, but you gave service to my feet.” [1] So with complete confidence let any and every soul that needs to be set free by the grace of the Lord from her manifold iniquities, and to be purified in the Church from her impurity, so to say, of her prostitution, approach the feet of the Lord, shed tears on them as she confesses, wipe them with her hair. The Lord’s feet are the preachers of the Gospel, the woman’s hair superfluous possessions. Let her wipe them with her hair, wipe them thoroughly, let her practice generosity and kindness. And when she has wiped them, let her kiss them; let her receive the peace, in order to have charity.” [2] The fragrance that filled the whole house Here Augustine deals with a favorite theme, the Christian imperative to preach the Gospel to all nations. Just as the fragrance of the costly pistic ointment fills the whole house, so too the good news of Christ’s salvation of humanity must be known all over the world. “ ‘Now the house was filled with the fragrance’; The world was filled with a good report, for the good fragrance is a good report.”[3] The world should be filled with the fragrance of Christ’s Gospel. But that fragrance must be spread by apostles. Augustine knows that even among those who preach the gospel, there are evil people who are motivated by self-aggrandizement and envy. Augustine warns his listeners that to be known publicly as a Christian and to live an evil life is to blaspheme Christ. The good fragrance of the Gospel is not affected by the shortcomings of the preacher. If the preacher is a sinner, the Gospel still smalls as sweetly. If the preacher is a saint, his sanctity cannot enhance the Gospel’s sweet odor. The good and the bad may effectively preach side by side and they may both bring people to God. Even St. Paul had to tolerate such evil collaborators, men who envied Paul his success and still tried to outdo him. But what does he say? "Whether by occasion or by truth, let Christ be proclaimed." They who love me proclaim; they who envy me proclaim. The former live by the good fragrance; the latter die by the good fragrance. Yet let Christ's name be proclaimed by the preaching of both; let the world be filled with the best fragrance. You loved him doing good things, you lived by the good fragrance; you envied him doing good things, you died by the good fragrance. Because you wanted to die, did you for that reason cause that fragrance to be evil? Do not envy and the good fragrance will not kill you.[4] The fragrance that saves the just will destroy the envious The Lord tolerates such co-habitation in this life so that no effort is spared in the task of bringing the fragrance of the gospel to every corner of the earth. The Church has good and evil preachers with it; these the Lord tolerates for the greater good. But in the end, he will sift the chaff from the grain and then those who have preached through envy of the good apostles or with hatred will be punished. The same fragrance that brings life to the good will be the damnation of the evil. “Happy those who live by the good fragrance; but what is more unhappy than those who die by the good fragrance.”[5] Judas Iscariot is the prime example of those who preached the Gospel along with the other eleven. But he was never one of the Lord’s intended apostles. The Lord allowed a bad man to sit among his apostles, to go with them and to give the appearance of belonging to Jesus. But Augustine says that he did not possess apostolic blessedness. “He followed Jesus with the body and not with the heart.”[6] The fragrance of the very Gospel which he preached is the cause of his destruction at the Judgment. Just as he and Peter ate the same bread of life and drank the same cup of the Lord together, yet the bread of life and the cup were for the destruction of Judas while they were for the salvation of Peter, so too the fragrance of the Gospel that saved Peter destroyed Judas because of his blasphemy. [1] In Joh. Evang. Tract. 50, 6. CCSL xxxvi, 435. “Unge pedes bene uiuendo dominica sectare uestigia. Capillis terge : labes superflua, da pauperibus, et Domini pedes tersisti, illi enim superflua corporis uidentur. Habes quod agas de superfluis tuis; tibi superflua sunt, sed Domini pedibus necessaria. Forte in terra Domini pedes indigent. De quibus enim de membris suis in fine dicturus est: Cum uni ex minimis meis fecistis, mihi fecistis? Superflua vestra impendistis, sed pedibus meis obsecuti estis.” [2] Sermon 99, 13. [3] In Joh. Evang. Tract. 50, 7. CCSL xxxvi, 435. “Domus autem impleta est odore; mundus impletus est fama bona; nam odor bonus, fama bona est.” [4] In Joh. Evang. Tract. 50, 8. CCSL xxxvi, 436. “Sed quid ait? Sive occasione, sive veritate Christus annuntietur. Annuntiant qui me amant, annuntiant qui mihi invident; illi bono odore vivunt, et illi bono odore moriuntur; tamen utrisque praedicantibus nomen Christi annuntietur, odore optimo mundus impleatur. Amasti bene agentem, vixisti bono odore; invidisti bene agenti, mortuus es bono odore. Namquid quia mori volisti, ideo odorem illum malum esse facisti? Noli invidere, et non the occident bonus odor.” [5] In Joh. Evang. Tract. 50, 7, 2. CCSL xxxvi, 436. “Felices qui bono odore vivunt; quid autem infelicius illis qui bono odore moriuntur.” [6] In Joh. Evang. Tract. 50, 10. CCSL xxxvi, 437. “ ... et Dominum perditus sequebatur, quia non corde, sed corpore sequebatur.”
Theological reflection for Palm Sunday 2008
Fr. Tim Kelly