A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the village of Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Now Bethany is right close to Jerusalem. There, they gave Jesus a banquet at which Martha served. Lazarus was one of those at table with Jesus.
Mary brought a pound of costly perfume with which she anointed the feet of Jesus. Then she dried them with her hair, and the whole house was filled with the ointment's fragrance. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, the one about to hand Jesus over, protested. Why was this perfume not sold, he said? It could have been it would have brought 300, and the money could have been given to the poor.
He didn't say this out of concern for the poor, but because he was a thief and, he held the purse and helped himself to what the purse contained. Anyway, to this Jesus replied, leave the woman alone. Let her keep it against the day they prepare me for burial. The poor, you always have with you, but me, you will not always have. The great crowd of Jews discovered that Jesus was out there in Bethany and came out not only because of Jesus, but also to see Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
The fact was the chief priest planned to kill Lazarus also because many Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him because of Lazarus. This is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you lord Jesus. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Part of my misspent youth went into the pleasure of reading John Ruskin.
The college I went to, we had his all his work beautifully bound and somehow I got to reading Ruskin. You could read Ruskin until you died. He was prolific. Now I don't remember much that I read about it. I remember a footnote.
This is you know, memory's a crazy thing. I remember a footnote. In the footnote, Ruskin says, as I if I recall correctly, that it's useless to try really to eliminate poverty because Christ said, you have the poor always with you, quoting today's text. I have now I as I say, just because a person is bed dead, you cannot you shouldn't speak, things about them which are not very favorable. But that's the way I remember it.
It was only in I can even I even think it was on the left page at the bottom of the page. The poor you have always with you, so why get all frustrated? Remember, he's living at the end of the nineteenth century when John Stuart Mill and all the rest of them are getting all excited, you know, about eliminating poverty. Anyway, he quoted Christ saying, you can't get rid of poverty. You're going to have it with you always.
Now in my own lifetime, not going back to my misspent youth, I it was loudly proclaimed in certain circles not many moons ago that the Vatican should sell off all its art objects and give the money to the poor. What's the Vatican doing with with untold wealth in in the museum pieces when that money when it could be turned into cash and alleviate poverty because nobody with a grain of common sense thinks you're going to eliminate it by giving things away. Now the third point. In Cartagena, the famous city of Colombia that was one of the great one of the three great cities for the entrance of the slaves into the new world. Cartagena was one of those three cities.
How many thousand of black people came from Africa and came up into the Bay Of Souls? No one knows exactly. We have figures and the figures are pretty big. One there was a Jesuit there, Peter Cleaver, from up around Barcelona and Spain. He was very close to the time of Ignatius himself.
He was one of the earliest Jesuits. He came over there, was ordained, and devoted his life not to eliminating slavery. He didn't write a word against slavery as far as I know. He didn't write anything. He was too busy doing what he could to baptize the black people coming in and to do what he could for them.
Now what he could do wasn't much, but what he could do he did even if it was just giving them a few pieces of candy when they arrived in desperate straits. Now my point is this, you're wondering where we're going. The the text this morning says that the house was filled with fragrance of the perfume. When you go down to Cartagena, the first thing you see of Ben Cartagena, one of one of the first things, is the dome over the tomb of Peter Claver. That cost a lot of money to put that dome up there.
How much better it would have been to put it into the poor? You wouldn't eliminate poverty, but you would have perhaps converted it into alleviating some suffering for the time being. How much better St. Patrick's in on New York, which was built, we are told, on the dimes of Irish serve maidservants. How much better would it have been to take that money and alleviate a few pockets of poverty?
Would it? Would it? You wouldn't have eliminated slavery by not putting the dome over the over the claver's body down there. You wouldn't eliminated poverty in Cartagena by not putting that dome up there. About the only great thing that you see down there reminding you of Peter Claver now is that dome.
Here's the dome of the inquisition on one side. Here's the the dome of the of the city hall on the other, but rising above them all is the dome over Peter Claver's tomb, over his body. You walk in New New York and you see a church there. You go to Europe and you see the great cathedrals. Who built them?
We don't even know. How were they built? In many instances, we don't remotely have any great information. But they came from the people, and, for the most part, from poor people. Now this argument this argument, why didn't you sell them perfume and give the money to the poor?
Why didn't you why instead of putting money into churches and buildings and libraries taken and pictures, get rid of that and take the money and give it to the poor? The church is too wealthy. What has wealth to do with Jesus Christ who didn't have a roof over his head? These are the things you hear all the time. And remember, there's some truth in these things.
There's truth in everything because if a thing is, it's there's truth in it. So let's not be shocked at that. But the the the it's not a simple thing at all because the first thing you have to admit that by giving things away you don't eliminate poverty. That's for sure you don't eliminate poverty. You may alleviate a painful situation in this instance or in that instance.
So here we have it, you see. I can remember growing up with some of my friends in our little town who would have the courage to go into Mexico, And the tales they would about all they would remember of their trip to Mexico was the gold, as they called them, the gold altars and the gold statues, and the abject poverty that you saw right around those very churches. Well, I've seen all of that and so many so have you. But what have you seen? Is the gold on that wood because it's all that's what it is, gold leaf is is that the cause of the poverty?
By ripping off the gold leaf from the wooden statues and converting it into cash, would that it it wouldn't eliminate poverty, believe me. We all know that. What would it do? What is more important for human beings? Is it true that you can't make a Christian on an empty stomach?
Is that true? Is it true before that we can win souls to Christ, we have to have them well fed and well housed and 100% hygienic, beautifully scrubbed with a fine ivory odor? Is that true? To hear some people talk today, you're thinking it's true. This is the whole idea of this Christianized Marxism.
See, I'm just laying the thing before you. But the point I'm making is and I I come back to Cartagena because I had eight solid weeks of being able to look, but more than that. But the thing is, when you look at that city, you think of its history, you think of the present, you think of religion, and there you have a concrete expression that is of course, you you know it's about 200, 300 years old. Now the what is the impact of that on people? Does it do they do they notice it?
I don't know. I noticed it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. But there you have an actual memorial of something great, of a man I'm just singling this out, of a man who who gave himself utterly, and I may add to the scandal of his brethren. Peter Claver was a scandal. What do you make of a man here when you have a religious community dining in the refectory and you have one of your community come down through the refectory with his mattress on his shoulders confessing sin?
You know, that's disturbing to your meal. So Claver was not an easy man to live with, you know, he was an eccentric. But it's he's the one that's remembered in Cartagena. It's the dome over his corpse, over his body, that stands out on the horizon on the skyline. And he stands for something, and that dome stands for something.
If people don't avert to it, that's their problem. But some people do avert to it. You when you come to Washington, you certainly can't miss seeing the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial or the Lincoln Memorial. I mean, even if you're totally blind, you'd run against them, you see. And so this to me, there's a tremendous issue here.
Our blessed lord, as I said yesterday, our Christ never had a had a had a hard or a harsh work for the crowd, for the multitude. And the same word in Greek, for the multitude that he fed, it's the same word for the multitude that cried, crucify him. If you be Christ, the son of god, get down from the cross, then we'll believe you. It was the same word is used. It means a disorderly mob or rabble.
And there's not, as far as I know, not a single word in the New Testament where Christ had a critical or a harsh word for the crowd. All he said, I am filled with tenderness for the crowd. So that in in this room, this house where Mary anointed our lord's feet and the house was filled with the fragrance of this waste. Was it waste? Is Saint Patrick's Cathedral a waste?
Is that dome in Cartagena a waste? Is Notre Dame Cathedral on the Ile De France? Is that a waste? Is Charcot a waste? Is Montserrat a waste?
It needn't be a waste. The fragrance of these things should lift our souls to god. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.