by CCW | 2 April 2012 21:00
Mary’s word to God frames our reflections upon Christ’s Passion this Holy Week. The accounts of the Passion are read in their fullness from all four Gospels during this week. On Monday in Holy Week we begin The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Mark and conclude his account of the Passion on Tuesday.
The beginning of the Passion according to St. Mark is framed by the story of a woman having a box of ointment of spikenard which is broken open and used to anoint Jesus’ head and by the story of Peter’s weeping upon the realization that he has betrayed Jesus. In a way, the tears of Peter and the outpouring of the spikenard signal the only good things that we can say about our humanity on this day. For in between lies all of the deceit and folly, compromise and violence, miscarriage of justice and forms of convenience, not to mention betrayal, that belong to the untruth and darkness of our human hearts. Not a pretty picture, we must say. The thoughts of many hearts are indeed revealed to us.
What the woman does at the beginning of the Mark’s account of the Passion occasions complaint. The disciples murmur against her. Yet, Jesus is very direct. “Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me: for ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could; she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.” A powerful passage, it convicts our hearts about our judgments and criticisms of one another and about our neglect of those who are in need in our communities. “The poor ye have with you always and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.” This states, it seems to me the true basis of our charitable actions. Jesus here connects those actions with what the woman has done to him. The anointing foreshadows his death and burial. It is, he is saying, a good work that she has done that is to be celebrated and remembered, indeed, “throughout the whole world.” It, too, is an act of love. It is a kind of worship.
The wonder of the beginning of Mark’s Passion is that the beginning scene and the end scene are not about words. The woman with the alabaster box of ointment of spikenard says nothing; Peter in the end scene, “call[s] to mind the word that Jesus said unto him”, and “when he thought thereon, he wept”. No words. In between lie all manner of words of betrayal and harm, words of folly and hatred. The woman’s words are in her action; Peter’s repentance, too, is without words, only tears. Both the ointment and the tears arise out of a broken box, on the one hand, and a broken heart, on the other hand. In both cases there is the foreshadowing of the breaking open of the body of Christ and the breaking open of the heart of God.
May it be so even unto us according to this word, learning to honour Christ in his death and resurrection for us and honouring him in our service of the poor and in the sacrifice of our tears of repentance.
Fr. David Curry,
Monday in Holy Week, 2012
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/04/02/sermon-for-monday-in-holy-week-2/
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