A Time to Offer, A Time to Sacrifice

My dear brothers and sisters, yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday and we experienced the passion of Christ together in the liturgy. Today, Mother Church invites us, through the lectionary to go back to Bethany, before the passion, to look more carefully at what Jesus, and the people around him were thinking about.

In the Gospel of today, the people prepared a dinner for him. We know that it was not a small family dinner because Scripture records that large crowds showed up when the Jews found out that Jesus was there, and they wanted to also see Lazarus. And at that time, it was common generosity to offer visitors hospitality when they came.

Through this detail, we know that the chief priests witnessed the popularity of Jesus, a man who had raised a dead man to life! This did not go well with them because they knew that the popularity of Jesus would mean that their followers would eventually leave them. This also meant that they will lose a substantial amount of their income because they were living in luxury because they depended on the offerings made to their synagogues – offerings which they demanded from the faithful. Hence, in reaction to this, they began to plot to get rid of Jesus and even Lazarus.

At the same time, we saw that when “Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus”, Judas reacted to what was happening because, he associated what Mary was doing, with the monetary worth of the perfumed oil. However, the evangelist records that “Judas said this not because he cared about the poor” and this implied that he was upset because he thinking of how the value of the oil could had benefited him.

In contrast, we saw Mary’s love for Jesus as she anointed Jesus’ feet. Although this scripture did not give us a reason, we could consider the possibility that Jesus had already informed Mary, Martha and Lazarus what was going to happen. As such, she took out that she thought was most precious to her to offer to Jesus, and so she anointed Jesus’ feet just as the Jews would anoint the body of someone who had passed away.

My brothers and sisters, I think the scriptures remind us of the dangers of the temptation of money, wealth and riches in general. Hence, I think at the start of this Holy Week, let us consider the place of money and riches in our lives. Does it control us, affect our relationship with God, with the religious community. When we need to spend money for the church or for ourselves, are we more like Mary or more like Judas or the chief priests?

I think what is interesting is that instead of just focusing on the virtue of being frugal and thrifty, the Gospel invites to consider that sometimes, holding back the expenditure to build it up for our own wants can be a bad thing too. Instead, what we are invited to consider is whether the use of the money will help us deepen our relationship with God and the people around us! Jesus’ response, “Leave her alone”, signaled to her that He was not opposed to Mary’s offering of the oil, nor her act of anointing. I believe this was the case because Mary’s actions and offering showed her deep love for Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God. Thus, what we are led to think about are:

Are we consumed with gathering wealth and riches for ourselves in the name of frugality and thriftiness? Or are we keeping them for the use of the greater good for God and the people of God?

This is most clear in the lives of many religious. They try so hard to live simply that they forget to take care of themselves or try to improve the conditions of the flock that they are serving. Sometimes, they chose not to replace their shoes when they are in bad condition, causing problems to their bodies later in their life. Sometimes, they don’t buy new materials to read, things that are needed in the parish, and everyone is left worse off, because the theology of the religious are not current, or the parish stays like it was first founded many years ago. Therefore, as people serving the faithful, we need to be careful not to turn good stewardship into mere stinginess, we need to mindful that spending money can be a good investment for ourselves, our service to the people, our community ambience and experience too.

My dear friends, if this is something challenging for you, for us, then we need to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit whenever we are unsure if what we are planning to spend money on is meaningful in terms of building our relationship with God. We don’t want to rub expensive oil on our feet every day, just to imitate Mary in the Gospel. What we hope is when the time comes when we need to part with the most precious things in our lives, material things, our reputation, our future and even our lives – we may be have the acute sense to discern the way forward.

We also have to learn to do this together, to listen to each other, each others’ needs, just like Mary listened and understood from Jesus, that this was indeed the time to open up her treasure chest!