Holy Week Monday

Scripture: Lectionary # 258. Isaiah 42:1-7. Psalm 27:1.2.3.13-14. John
12:1-7:

We have entered Holy Week with the celebration of Jesus' entry into
Jerusalem. Today we return to Bethany, just a few miles from the holy city
where Jesus is with his friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. We are going
to follow Jesus very closely through the chosen liturgical readings for we
have been given almost a reliving account of these last days of Jesus in
the Gospels. This is the most solemn and sacred time of year for
Christians and as Catholics we see Lent coming to an end as we enter into
the beautiful liturgies of the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the
Easter Vigil. Our minds and memories help our hearts to enter into the
most poignant sufferings of the Lord, his rejection and persecution and
death and then the greatest surprise of humankind--his resurrection for the
dead.This will happen on the Jewish first day of the week or our Sunday now
called Easter Sunday.

We are called to pray and reflect deeply on these sacred events of the
Paschal Mystery and to let them transform us into the calling of disciples
of the Lord. This day, Monday of Holy Week, is a blessed day for Jesus.
One of the few that he experienced in the last year of his life. He is
enjoying a banquet at the home of his best friends in Bethany. We enter the
scene as Mary (not Mary Magdalene) anoints Jesus' feet and dries them with
her hair. Anointing is appropriate for Jesus is her Messiah as she and her
sister have already known and acknowledge, but also she performs a sacred
symbolic act in that this is said by Jesus himself to be in preparation for
his death. Jesus is aware that his "hour" is near and that this loving and
affectionate action makes him more intentional about it so that he shares
it with his dear friends.

We symbolically and yet really enter into this scene of the banquet by
participating in the Eucharist where our banquet is the bread and wine
changed into the very body and blood of Christ, that is, into his
sacramental presence. We sense like the friends of Jesus his loving
presence and affection toward us and those gathered in his name in a sacred
place, a house of the Lord or a chapel, church, or sanctuary. The memory
of Mary helps us to reverence and love Jesus as she did through her
symbolic action of the anointing. Jesus has told us "this anointing is for
the day they prepare me for burial." We have this wonderful woman named
Mary, the same name as Mary the Mother of Jesus, as our companion on this
day and like her our love is focused on the living Jesus among us in word
and sacrament. We praise the Lord and thank him for saving all of us
through his sacred Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Amen.