Monday of Holy Week

One of the ways we often express our gratitude to those who have served us in a loving way is by taking them out for a meal or by inviting them to our own home for a meal. At table, around food, we express our appreciation. In today’s gospel reading, the family of Lazarus, Martha and Mary invite Jesus to dinner in their home, in gratitude for his wonderful act of loving service to the family by bringing Lazarus back to life. The meal alone would have been sufficient gratitude, but one of Lazarus’ sisters, Mary, went further. She anointed the feet of Jesus with very costly ointment and then proceeded to wipe his feet with her hair. It was an extraordinary act of loving service which, in some respects, looked ahead to Jesus’ own act of loving service a few days later when he washed the feet of his disciples. Mary’s act of loving service looked even further ahead to Jesus’ death and burial. As Jesus says, she was anointing him with a view to his burial. Mary’s anointing was strengthening Jesus for his forthcoming passion and death. Her act of loving service stands in sharp contrast to the ridiculing of her actions by Judas who was to betray Jesus to death. At the beginning of a week during which powerful men would do their worst to Jesus, a powerless woman gives him a tender and costly service, just as Jesus was about to serve us with a love that would cost him not less than everything. The Lord who came not to be served but to serve, nonetheless, knew how to receive the loving service of others when it was offered to him. The risen Lord continues to serve us today with the same love that led him to the cross, and he also welcomes our service of him. Just as Mary served Jesus at a moment when he was very vulnerable, we continue to serve the Lord today through our service of the most vulnerable among us, through the care we take never to break the crushed reed nor quench the wavering flame, in the words of the first reading.