Holy Week: Getting Right

She was a woman, a sinner. Her hair was long and she did not attempt to brush it back. As she came toward the table, and in those days everyone reclined at table on the left arm leaving the right arm free to eat, she came and stood over the feet of our Blessed Lord and let fall upon the sandaled harbingers of peace, a few tears like the first warm drops of a summer rain. Then ashamed of what she had done, she attempted to wipe away the tears with her hair. All the while Simon was thinking to himself,

“If He only knew what kind of a woman she is.”

How did he know?
She took from about her neck, a small vessel. In those days women carried precious perfume about the neck in a bottle and when they attended funeral rites, they would break the bottle over the remains and then after allowing the perfume to fall upon the corpse, they would throw even the remains of the bottle onto the body. And she releases from her neck, this vessel of precious ointment but does not do what you and I do, pour it out gently drop-by-drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving, the generosity of our gift. She broke the vessel… gave everything. For love knows no limits. 

(Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)



Now is the time of getting right...