“And I, if I be lifted up … will draw all unto me.”
Monday in Holy Week sets before us the beginning of the Passion according to St. Mark. It begins with the story of an unnamed woman who breaks open “an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious” and anoints the head of Jesus. It is a touching act of compassion and devotion; an act of worship and an acknowledgement of Jesus. But this reading ends with the threefold denial of Christ by Peter and his tears of contrition when he recalls what Christ had said to him that “before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.” An outpouring of ointment, an outpouring of tears. And all because of how Christ draws us to himself.
The compassionate act of the woman anointing the head of Jesus excites the indignation of some within themselves who “murmured against her.” But Jesus highlights the meaning of her action: “she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.” She anticipates the meaning of Christ’s Passion in his death for us. Her act is an act of love and is recognised as such by Jesus. The breaking of the box anticipates the breaking open of the body of Christ and the outpouring of his blood for us. Peter, in confronting his own weakness and his betrayal of Jesus, is moved to tears.
“Take with you words, and return to the Lord,” Hosea says. He is the great love-prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Hosea are read as the first lessons at Matins and Vespers respectively on this day. Hosea’s words convict us of having forgotten the Lord our God who “knew us in the wilderness” who cared for us and from whom we have turned away towards idols of our own making. But God turns us back to himself. “Take with you words and return to the Lord … Say no more, ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands” for “I will heal their faithlessness,” God says, “I will love them freely for my anger has turned from them.” Hosea concludes, “Whoever is wise let him understand these things.” It is a kind of commentary in advance on what Jesus says in the second lesson at Vespers from John 14 about loving Jesus by keeping his commandments and finding ourselves in him, embraced in the love of the Trinity. “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.”
The woman is drawn to him in love; Peter who follows Christ albeit a far off denies him three times only to convict himself through recalling what Jesus had said. His tears are the tears of contrition; the tears of sorrow at having betrayed what he most loves. What flows out both from the alabaster box of ointment of spikenard and from the tears of Peter belong to our being drawn more fully to Christ. There is no hiding the failings and weakness of our humanity in its disarray and confusion.
Christ is lifted up before us in the reading of these Scriptures so that he may draw us to himself. Our hearts are convicted and convinced of his love for us, a love that moves us in spite of ourselves and draws us to him.
“And I, if I be lifted up … will draw all unto me.”
Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week, 2024