Holy Monday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
“In all their affliction he was afflicted,” Isaiah says, words which have shaped the Christian understanding of Christ’s Passion and its life of prayer. Consider the following prayer (BCP, p.54) and see how it builds on Isaiah and the logic of the Passion.
Almighty God, who art afflicted in the afflictions of thy people: Regard with thy tender compassion those in anxiety and distress; bear their sorrows, and their cares, supply all their manifold needs; and help both them and us to put our whole trust and confidence in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Passion of Christ is only possible through the Incarnation, God made man in Jesus Christ. His sufferings, by a kind of metaphorical transposition, are known in God; technically or theologically, this is the communicatio idiomatum, the interchange of the properties of divine and human without compromise to the distinctive integrity of each. God in himself is “without body, parts, or passions” (Art I. Thirty-nine Articles). “God is love,” as John teaches. That divine love transcends all the limited forms of human love but rather than negating them seeks their perfection and truth as found in him. This is the work of the Passion. It is, I think, the meaning of our being pierced in contemplating what Christ wills to suffer for us. It is illustrated in the moving scenes of The Beginning of the Passion according to St. Mark on Monday in Holy Week.
It begins with the scene of an unnamed woman breaking “an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard,” a precious and expensive aromatic and amber essential oil derived from a mid-Asian plant of the honeysuckle family. “She brake the box, and poured it on his head,” Mark tells us. Alabaster is a translucent stone often used in carvings particularly of the human form. The breaking of the box, Austin Farrer notes, suggests the breaking open of the body of Christ from which his blood is outpoured. Here the breaking of the alabaster box serves as the anointing of Jesus: a moving image of an extravagance of love outpoured by the woman who sees something precious and holy in Christ. Yet her action excites the opposite: indignation, resentment, and complaint about wasting the ointment which “might have been sold for more than three hundred pieces of silver, and have been given to the poor.” In short, “they murmured against her.”
It suggests a conflict of goods not unlike our culture and world as measured in economic terms. What Jesus says in response is particularly revealing. “Let her alone,” for what she has done is “a good work on me”. It is not that the poor don’t matter – human compassion towards others is not to be overlooked. “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; but me ye have not always,” he says, indicating his Passion and Death in the body of his humanity. Yet he explains the deeper meaning that belongs to the woman’s action. “She hath done what she could; she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.” What she has done “shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.”
She has been pierced, we might say, moved with love for Christ in anticipation of his death and burial. Yet her action is seen negatively by those who are blind to the greater good of human redemption. The rest of The Beginning of the Passion highlights the story of human ignorance and betrayal in such scenes as at the Last Supper; at Gethsemane where Peter, James and John are unable to watch with Jesus in his time of prayer in sorrow and anticipation of his death; his betrayal by the kiss of Judas and his being taken captive and brought before the Sanhedrin who seek his death but find no cause in him yet give way to false witnesses and condemn him to death. The thoughts of many hearts are revealed, to be sure.
Most tellingly and movingly, the reading ends with Peter’s threefold denial of even knowing Christ. For when the cock crew, “Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him. Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.” Remembering Jesus’ words, Peter is inwardly pierced, his conscience convicted. Mark concludes with a simple economy of words, “when he thought thereon, he wept.”
His weeping is an outpouring of sorrow and contrition that complements the outpouring of the precious ointment from the broken alabaster jar. Recalling the words of Christ moves Peter to an awareness of his betrayals of Christ’s love. “Take with you words, and return to the Lord,” as Hosea says in the Office lessons on this day. Peter’s heart is revealed to him in two ways. He is pierced at once by sorrow and by love, “afflicted in the afflictions” that are already suffered by Christ for him and for us.
“A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week 2026