This Passion of the Gospel begins with this woman who has this Alabaster jar, a beautiful jar of very costly perfume. It took three hundred days wages. I was researching the common wage of people in Ohio, which is $60,000. Three hundred days of that wage would be $50,000. I want you to think about that alabaster jar costing $50,000. When she comes to meet Jesus, she does something so radical. She takes that jar, smashes it, breaks the seal, and then she pours it completely over his head. She has given everything that she has to the Lord. During that time, women weren’t paid, they didn’t have work, and they had some possessions. This possession was all that she probably had, but she knew something about Jesus. While the disciples slowly picked it up, she knew he was the Messiah.
All of the Old Testament and all of the prophets called the Messiah the Anointed One. So, she poured this oil over his head, revealing that he is the Anointed One, which means The Christ. She was revealing something to all of the disciples that they were slow to learn. And as she’s doing this and offering everything that she has to anoint Christ, the disciples begin to get angry with her. It says that they were infuriated by what she had done. She did something beautiful for the Lord, but it was taken and twisted. Judas said, “That money could have been saved and given to the poor.” Jesus gives us this very interesting, disturbing line. He says, “You only have me for a time, but the poor you will always have with you.” What that means is that throughout all of church history, we have had the great privilege of loving, serving, and providing for the poor. She’s doing something at a heightened level. She’s taking that beautiful, perfumed oil in the alabaster jar and she shatters it. And by that, there’s no turning back for her. Once that jar is shattered, she gives her life completely to Jesus. And the oil that poured down on his head not only signified that he was the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, he was also Priest, Prophet, and King. They would later call him the King of the Jews, but the anointing had an even more profound significance than that.
See, this woman was following Jesus. She knew what was going on. He was preparing all of his disciples for his death. She also knew that he would be crucified in a humiliating way. When somebody was crucified like that their body was not anointed or prepared for burial, and so she anointed him with this oil, her whole life preparing Jesus for his own burial.
I wonder in our own lives has there been a time when we shattered the jar. By that I mean has there been a time in our life where we have given ourselves completely to Jesus in such a way that there’s no turning back, there’s no putting the perfume back into the jar. The disciples were slow, again, in picking this up, and when Jesus asked them to pray, they would fall asleep. When Jesus began to be condemned and journeyed toward his crucifixion, the disciples scattered. But this woman remained with him. This woman knew his true identity. This woman knew that he was preparing them for his death. And she knew that his time was limited.
As we enter into this Holy Week and celebrate this year of the Eucharistic Revival, every time we come to Mass, Jesus is present. Bread and wine are consecrated and become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why we come together to worship. Do we give ourselves fully and completely to him without ever turning back? I want you to think about your life. Is there a time in your life that you can point to and say that was the time, from that moment on, I gave myself completely?
If that moment hasn’t happened for us in this life, maybe this Holy Week could be the time. Maybe this is the year that we give ourselves to him without turning back. I invite you to allow this Holy Week and make it as holy as possible. Be like the woman so generous with your time, and increase your prayer. Spend as much time as you can praying during this Holy Week. Fasting. We’ve been fasting all through Lent, but we need to increase that fasting especially this week. Finally, Alms Giving. Let this Holy Week be a time, as Mother Teresa would say, “until it hurts”.
If we haven’t experienced the shattered jar in our own life, we can do so this week. And I also believe that if we don’t give ourselves fully to Christ, our lives will probably be shattered in other ways so that we can finally be open to him. The woman with the alabaster jar knew him. She loved him. She gave herself to him, and people hated her because of it. We, too, as Catholics, will experience this. We love Jesus so much we want to give everything to him and his church. But we’ll be criticized. May we be inspired by this woman to take the Alabaster Jar of our lives and shatter it, and so proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, Messiah.
