Readings:
Isaiah 42:1-7
John 12:1-11
Reflection:
In today’s Gospel from John, Judas had a point.
The perfume that Mary, sister of recently raised Lazarus, lavished on Jesus’ feet at that dinner party was worth over $64,000 at today’s prices. As Judas said, that would have fed a lot of people.
In yesterday’s long version of the Passion in Mark’s Gospel, we heard the same story, though this time it is an anonymous woman at a dinner in the home of Simon the Leper (presumably cured by Jesus!), and the rest of the guests made the same complaint.
Yet, as the Evangelists point out, these dinners took place a couple of kilometres from Jerusalem. In five days’ time for John and two days’ time for Mark, Jesus would have been arrested secretly, interrogated, tortured terribly, and killed brutally with all the apparatus the State had at its disposal. Jesus knew it was coming, even if his disciples and everyone else preferred denial, avoidance and pretence.
All except these two women. How do you tell the one you love, how much you love them, especially when they are about to be torn away and you know something in you will die with them? Buy a cheaper perfume??
It is said, ‘the heart has its reasons, that reason knows nothing about’.
As we walk to Calvary this week, may our hearts lead the way.
Fr Tom McDonough CP the Parish Priest and Community Leader at St.Paul’s, Glen Osmond, SA