Mary of Bethany’s Authentic Love

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Jesus, therefore, six days before the Pasch, came to Bethany, where Lazarus had been dead and Jesus raised to life. They made him a supper there, and Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those that were at table with him” (John 12:1-2).

Initially, Our Lord had gone up to Jerusalem for the feast, but when He goes there, He senses the atmosphere of betrayal, of oppression, of bitterness, of hatred, of opposition, and so He withdraws to Bethany. This is just six days before the Paschal feast.

We have this great contrast: the lack of hospitality in Jerusalem, that atmosphere of betrayal, of mistrust, of hatred—and the profound hospitality that He receives in Bethany, fruit of authentic love.

“They made him a supper there.” Mary and Martha and Lazarus extend the hospitality of their domestic Church to Jesus, and He savors this. It's the last great piece of hospitality and holiness that He's going to enjoy on this earth.

Then Mary does a very special thing. She's going to win the Oscar for this. “She takes a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment” (John 12:3).

Mary does something of profound affection, in total contrast to what Our Lord is going to experience in the coming week. She takes this pound of ointment of great price. It's as though she goes to her local ATM and withdraws everything she has there and spends it all on a bottle of perfume. She really treats the Body of Christ very well.

St. Josemaría liked to say that in all our altars, in all our sacristies, in all our tabernacles, we have to try and make those places Bethany—with cleanliness, with affection, with care.

If you have a chance in your local parish or upcountry in your outstation, see what you can do to try and make those standards of care of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament the standards of Bethany, so that we really treat Him well, so that little children who come into the church can see that we give the best to God and that that becomes a custom in your family.

The little children, with any money they may get as part of their allowance or presents on their birthday or Christmas or whenever—they get into the habit from a young age of giving something back to God; of contributing out of what they have to the maintenance of the church. In some way they also recognize that ‘God has given great things to me and so I need to give great things back to God.’

“She anointed the feet of Jesus.” Whenever we see feet being mentioned in the Gospel, something very important is taking place. There's this great gesture of affection.

Not only that, but she wipes His feet with her hair. We don't often see in Hollywood movies the actress wiping the feet of the actor with her hair. It's an even more profound gesture of affection.

“And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.” You get the impression that it wasn't just filled with the odor of the ointment but was filled with the fragrance of authentic love and affection.

“Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him...” (John 12:4).

As often happens in the words of the Gospel, we find this great contrast. On the one hand there's this Mary of Bethany who knew how to love and knew how to express that love, to show it in concrete deeds.

And now, we have her contrasted with Judas, who was the apostle who did not know how to love. He never learned how to love.

All the formation that he received, all the beautiful words and gestures that he heard from the lips of Jesus, and the actions and the miracles that Our Lord had performed, nothing penetrates. It's like water off a duck's back.

The only thing he's thinking about is money. “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?” (John 12:5).

Experts say that three hundred pence in those days was equivalent to a year's wages. That sheds light on how much money Mary of Bethany had spent on this ointment. She got the best she could find, the genuine article. It was no cheap imitation. There's real quality in what she gives to God.

Judas, who has a mercenary mind, misses completely the richness of the gesture, and all he focuses on is money.

There was a priest in the Philippines once who was collecting in his parish for the roof of the church, because they needed some repairs for the roof of the church, and he had a collection for this.

A few weeks later, in his homily he said: “You know, we got various reactions from various parishioners. Some people complained that we were fixing the roof of the church. They didn't want to give because, they said, ‘Why is this money not given to the poor?’”

He said, “As a parish priest, my experience is that when we're collecting for the roof of the church, the people who give to fix the roof of the church are the people who also give when it's time to have a collection for the poor. But our experience is also that those who do not want to give when we're collecting for the roof of the church, when it comes to collecting for the poor, they also don't give either.”

It was a rather slap in the face to many of his parishioners. But he was saying some home truths and bringing it home to them.

These were the words of Judas: “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred pence?” We find that Judas knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

The important significance of the gesture of Mary that's going to last for the whole of eternity—this is expressed to a large extent in the Altars of Repose all over the world; where the church and parishioners, with their flowers, with their attention, with their candles, with their presence, try to take care of the body of Jesus, learning from the gesture of Mary of Bethany.

But all of this passes Judas by. Then we're told in the next sentence: “He said this, not because he cared for the poor” (John 12:6). It's interesting how St. John is so clear in his condemnation of Judas. He doesn't mince his words. “He doesn't care for the poor.”

If there's one basic message that Christ came to teach all His followers, it's to care for the poor, to be concerned about the less privileged. “Whenever you did it to one of these least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

But even that basic message is a message that this member of the apostles has not managed to grasp.

Then St. John says: “He said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief.” So this fellow apostle singles out Judas for this particular label and he knows what he's talking about. John calls a spade a spade.

Of all the apostles, of all the evangelists, John is the one that speaks most about charity. But when he comes to Judas, he has to speak the truth. Sometimes the greatest charity is to confront people with the truth.

Often that truth is uncomfortable. But people need to hear that truth and we need to hear that truth—the truth about ourselves, the truth about others, the truth about society. Society has to function on truth.

“He was a thief and having the purse carried the things that were put therein” (John 12:6). He used to steal from the communal purse.

This is like a salvo being fired over the bows of every human person for all eternity that is in charge of money. St. John is saying to us to be super careful about your own money and be one thousand times more careful about other people's money, because money can become very sticky.

The one thing John seems to say to us that brought Judas down was money. Everybody, always, in all circumstances, no matter who they are, has to have a healthy mistrust of themselves when it comes to money.

That should lead us to have an enormous transparency in relation to accountancy. Writing down the things we spend, or giving an account to anybody who entrusts money to us, even if they don't ask us for it.

If they say it's not necessary, then all the more it’s necessary that we would be meticulous, go out of our way to account for every last shilling passing through our hands, because of the great message of Judas in Holy Week.

Jesus therefore said: “Let her alone that she may keep it against the day of my burial” (John 12:7).

Our Lord is very clear. She's done a beautiful thing. She spent an awful lot of money on me. In some ways, she's made up for all the bitterness and the hatred and hypocrisy of the Pharisees—all the suffering that I'm going to endure in this coming week.

It's like a message to us and to everybody of all time that we can make up to Our Lord, atone to Him for the sins, for the ingratitude, for the negligence, for the meanness and stinginess of humankind all over the world that have not known how to be generous with their God.

Sometimes we look at wonderful buildings, cathedrals that have been built by people of previous centuries, and we see the enormous efforts they made, with such little means, to do something great for God, to leave a great testimony of their faith.

It's one of the things we have to try and infect people with, that thinking: to be generous to God, to give back to God. “What shall I give back to God for all that he has given to me?” say the Psalms (Ps. 116:12).

Now on this earth, with the things that God has given to me, and also in my will when I die, what will I be remembered for? Those things that are there in my possession, when I die, in many ways, don't belong to me anymore. All these things belong to God.

Judas can lead us to a new generosity, a new detachment, a new care with the material things of the world, because it's oh so possible to get totally caught up in those things, to be focused on the things of this world, and forget completely about the eternal wedding feast to which we are called.

Mary gives us this great example of detachment, of generosity, of poverty of spirit, of knowing the things that are really of worth and of value. She treats her God well. That's why Mary wins the Oscar.

That's why with young people, from an early age—teach young children how to give back to God. With the presents that they receive, that they give them to other children that don't have, or that they give donations to the Church from the monetary presents they may get—that they grow up through life learning how to give, how to give back, and seeing and thinking, How can I give more?

It's a great pathway to holiness, to joyfulness, and happiness in this world.

There's a phrase that says, “Wisdom sometimes comes with age and sometimes age comes alone” (Oscar Wilde). We can say that about all of the virtues. Sometimes generosity comes with age and sometimes age comes alone.

A young person who doesn't know how to be generous, who is selfish, mean, stingy—well, it's a pity. They have not learned in their life how to be generous.

But an older person, maybe in the latter years of their life, who hasn't learned how to be generous and to give—it’s really the pits. It's a very sad situation.

Judas is a bit like the patron saint of all of those people who have not learned to be generous with their life, with the passage of time, with all the good things God has given to them. They haven't learned how to see these things as gifts.

Notice how this great gesture of Mary takes place in the domestic Church. Each of us is entrusted with the domestic Church to form future saints, and that means forming them in virtue, teaching them what justice is, what charity is.

To give away things we don't need—that's not charity; that's justice. Mother Teresa says: “Give until it hurts” (Teresa of Calcutta, Address, Feb. 3, 1994).

When we're told that Judas put a price on this spikenard ointment, three hundred pence, a year's wages, we can definitely say that that must have hurt Mary. Maybe it hurt her a lot.

Mother Teresa invites us to “give until it hurts.” Invite children to give until it hurts—to give what they don't have to give; give the shirt off their back. It's a great way to live.

It leads us to forget all about ourselves, our own wants. You see, the devil is all the time helping us to focus on ourselves, to think about my wants. ‘I want this, I want that.’

Christ invites us to think about the needs of others. We know that Martha and Mary and Lazarus were not millionaires. They were just simple people in a small village. But they had great values. They loved Jesus Christ, and they wanted to show it with deeds.

It's easy to say to Jesus, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Maybe Judas even said those words. But Mary showed it with her deeds.

This Holy Week and this Lent, we have to try and see how we can go out of our way to show Our Lord with our deeds and make resolutions for the whole of our life to show our generosity with our deeds.

There was a priest in Manila once, a Don Bosco priest, who told a story of how there was a kid at a nearby street corner who used to sell cigarettes to the cars that stopped at the lights.

This kid didn't know how to manage his money. He was about eight years of age and he used to give his money to the priest to look after for him.

Every day he would bring maybe twenty shillings or so, twenty-five shillings, from the cigarettes he had sold, and then he would come and ask for five or ten shillings to buy some rice.

He saved up a little bit of money, a little bit extra. One day the kid came, and he asked the priest for sixty shillings and that was about everything he had saved up. The priest was a bit curious and asked him, “Well, why do you want sixty shillings?” Normally he asked for much less for his rice.

He said, “There's a woman who's given birth to a baby under the bridge and she's no milk for the baby and milk costs sixty shillings a can. So I thought I would buy some milk for the baby.”

The priest was very moved. Here was this young kid who had nothing in this world—a pair of slippers, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt—who manages to save up what for him is a small fortune—this orphaned kid with nothing. But at the first sight of someone in need, he was willing to go and spend all that money to help the need of that other person.

“How happy God must be,” he said, “when He looks down on this earth and sees a soul like that shining up at Him, a soul that has known how to put the needs of others before his own. What a refined soul.”

“Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

Lord, help us to be like that little kid. Teach our children to be like that little kid.

We all have something to give. Maybe it's our time occasionally. Maybe our energy. It might be material things. It might be thinking out of the box. It might be a visit to an elderly person or to a family that needs something or to a handicapped kid, giving them a few moments or hours of joy, and learning that these are the greatest happinesses on the planet, so that we don't become like Judas.

It's interesting how Holy Week presents these two models for us, as though presenting a choice before us. Learn to lead a simple and sober life, be happy in your domestic Church, having authentic values there—or learn to be like Judas, who missed all the great lessons in spite of all of his Christian formation.

Think about all the formation that Judas received, and you could say, with that English expression, straight from the horse's mouth: He couldn't have got more authentic formation. But it was all like water off a duck's back.

All the formation to which we have been exposed; perhaps in a Catholic family, or in a Catholic school, or in our local parish that our parents have brought us to ever since we were knee high to a grasshopper or to all the supernatural families of the Church to which we have been exposed—people who have spent their life educating other people's children, or religious communities that have spent their life taking care of other people's sick children, handicapped mentally, physically. Or taking care of hospitals. Or hospitals for the poor who can't afford the most basic medical care. The forgotten people of the world.

We can be so proud of our Church because our Church has given us this wonderful example of care, of generosity; given an example to the world of authentic charity, taking care of the other Christs that God has placed around us.

Mary of Bethany has shown us how Christ wants us to treat each soul, each body: “Whenever you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

That's how the Church has always tried to care for every soul that has come in contact with it—for its bodily welfare, for its spiritual welfare, for its eternal destiny, for its calling to the eternal wedding feast—so that every mind and heart might be formed and be able to communicate the fragrance of Christ; to put on that fragrance through the sacrament of Confession; to confess our sins for the times we haven't been generous, or haven't cared about others, or haven't absorbed the formation to which we've been exposed.

Fulton Sheen says that when water from a tap is dripping onto cement, drip, drip, drip. Over time, that drop of water can burrow a hole in the cement.

Sometimes the grace of God dripping onto our skull, over time, burrows a hole through that hard skull into our heart and into our soul.

Grace brings about change, conversion, in spite of our miseries, our past sins, for the times when we have been a bit more like Judas than like Mary.

This week is a time to make a decision to change. Change our hearts.

Lord, take out “this heart of stone” and give me “a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26). Judas had a heart of stone. All the great values passed him by. He was totally insensitive to Divine Love Incarnate with whom he was in contact in so many intimate ways.

He was the trusted apostle. He had the care of the purse. He had authority, he had prestige. All the other apostles trusted him. But he betrayed their trust.

Judas is like a lesson to us. No matter how much trust is placed in us in the organization, no matter how much prestige we may enjoy, no matter how many good things we might have done in the past—we all have the potential to be a thief.

We all have the potential to be leading a double life. Great on the outside, respected like Judas was, with prestige, but yet betraying that trust on the inside. Lack of unity of life.

The Second Vatican Council talks a lot about unity of life. The Pharisees lacked unity of life. They were one thing on the outside and they were something else on the inside.

We all have that capacity to have a profound lack of unity of life. That's why we have to take care of our formation, take care of our spiritual life, take care of our sacraments.

Get to confession frequently. Admit our miseries. Realize our faults and our sins, our wretchedness, so that we follow the true model, who is Mary of Bethany.

We build up the domestic Church along those lines, so that the souls that God has placed around us may see authentic virtue, authentic value in us—just like we see with Mary of Bethany—and so that this anointing of the feet of Jesus gets transmitted down through the centuries, because this is the gesture of great affection for the Body of Christ.

Each one of us is called to display, not just on Holy Thursday, but in our churches, in our outstations, in our tabernacles, and most of all, in our own souls when we go to receive the Body of Christ, so that we have that great refinement with Our Lord and that we make up to Him for all the sacrilegious communions and all the other sacrileges that may be committed against His body in this world, that we atone to Him like Mary of Bethany did.

To a large extent this is one of the messages of Holy Week, and of Holy Thursday in particular, and of this event that takes place six days before the Pasch.

Mary, may you help us to make very good use of these days and hours ahead to savor the richness of this time, to pay every attention to each step of the liturgy in the story of Holy Week that is so rich, so rich for our souls, for those of our children, and for the whole of our domestic Church.

Mary, may you take us by the hand and lead us through these great hours, so that we can truly learn all the great messages and lessons that Mary of Bethany has to teach us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD