The day was cloudy but still bright. Mel and I pushed through the doors of Trinita dei Monti and stepped into the hushed and subdued light of the church. In an effort to economize, many of the cavernous churches in Italy are not lit up with electric lights during a typical day. Rather sunlight from the windows illuminate the interior. As soon as we walked through the doors, we were greeted by this tableau.
I urged Melinda to take pictures of it with her better camera than my iphone, which she graciously did.
This story told in marble was very familiar and dear to me. One I had pondered many times.
In each of the four Gospels there is a story of a woman anointing Jesus. Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, Luke 7:36-38 and John 12:1-8 Details of the stories have been interchanged. It is thought that the story in Luke is a different incident which teaches about penitence, forgiveness and a loving response. The other three take place during the last week of Jesus' life, in John we are told that it is six days before Passover, the day before he entered Jerusalem. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, written within twenty years of so of Jesus' death. In reading this story, it changed my outlook on my life.
When he was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon, the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head. There were some who were indignant. “Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil? It could have been sold for more than three hundred days' wages and the money given to the poor.” They were infuriated with her. Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me. The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anticipated anointing my body for burial. Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” Mk 14:3-9 NAB
About ten years ago, I was going through a phase in my life when I was very hard on myself. Nothing I did was good enough. My harshest critic and judge was in my own head. That critic found what ever I did to be lacking and assured me that everyone else found me a failure and good for nothing.
St. Ignatius promoted a way of prayer that encourages you to imagine yourself in the Bible story. And so, I placed myself in the midst of this story, imagining what the weather was, how it felt to wear a long robe, the fragrance of the spikenard. And hearing Jesus say the words, “Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me....She has done what she could.” I felt such a release. For me it wasn't the others at table, but the voices in my own head that kept tearing at me. I realized I could let them go, if I honestly can say, I have done what I could.
In the midst of hard times in my life, I will stop and ask myself and God, am I doing what I can? Sometimes the answer is to realize there is something I can be doing differently and sometimes the answer is yes, I am doing what I can. Then I release any burden of guilt for whether it is enough or not, it is what I can.
It is in the book of John that we find Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany, with a liter of costly perfumed oil. She “anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair”. (12:3) How intimate and loving an act, to bend over another's feet and wipe them with one's hair. The artist, Daniele da Volterra, in the sixteenth century (during the same era of St. Ignatius' life) fused this story with the act of taking Christ from the cross. He imagined that Mary of Bethany would be here at his feet again. She is doing what she can, wiping his bloody feet with her hair.
In December, I started scanning through the some four thousand pictures of our trip for inspiration for making pottery for Lent. Coming upon these pictures, I stopped and spent time in the warmth of this memory. It wasn't until then that I really saw the jar at Mary's knees. A jar to carry precious oil to be used in anointing Christ, the sorrowful, the crucified.
Could I use this as a model?
No comments:
Post a Comment