A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the village of Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 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 made from genuine aromatic nard, very expensive stuff, with which she anointed Jesus' feet.
And then she dried his feet with her hair, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, the one about to hand Jesus over, protested. Why was this perfume not sold? It could have been it would have brought over 300, and the money could have been given to the poor. He did not say this out of concern for the poor, however, but because he was a thief.
He held the money purse of the group and used to help himself to what was deposited there. Well, to this objection of Judas, our lord replied, leave the woman alone. Let her keep it against the day they prepare me for my 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.
It's not far from Jerusalem, not only because of Jesus, but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. The fact was the chief priests were planning to kill Lazarus also because many Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in Jesus because of Lazarus. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise the Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. There is one little sentence here that always strikes me, and that is the way Judas protested against this waste. It was waste to take perfume, very costly stuff, and wash a person's feet with them. Remember, this was no ceremonial thing exactly. People needed to have their feet washed after they'd been walking around over there for a while.
It was very unusual to do it as Mary did it in this instance, however. But to make a big deal out of it and to waste money, A lot of it, which could have been used to relieve distress and misery of the poor. Well, even Judas saw that this was crazy. It made no sense. It was absurd.
So he proceeded to point this out. Now, the text adds that his motive, however, was not love of the poor, but because he loved money and was dipping into the till, helping himself. So, of course, the more that was in the purse, the more he had to pick out. That I don't know. That's an interpretation of the fact.
The fact that I want to present to you is a current and contemporary fact, and it has been contemporary for a long, long time. I can remember a few years ago when people would return from Mexico. This is more than a few years ago, I was in high school, my first time in high school. See, I did it twice. But people would go to Mexico, that was a big deal, you know, and come back and tell us all about the woes of Mexico.
How in these dreadfully poverty stricken villages, here where there was nothing but misery and dust and heat and people and babies and nursing mothers, it was distressing. Here you had in the midst of this squalor a beautiful church even with gold altars. Of course, they weren't gold. Gold leaf. They didn't know the difference.
But the thing is here in the midst of so much poverty, squalor, misery, hunger, thirst, you name it, here you had a magnificent building. How crazy, how absurd, what a rejection and a negation of God. How blind to your neighbor. Well, let's say it may be all of those things. It may be all of those things.
Possibly all of those things. But need it be all of those things? It certainly does not need to be all of those things. Remember remember, you can lose God in the poor. You can lose God in welfare.
You can lose God in charity. You can lose God in this classroom. You can lose God in nursing the sick. You can lose God in many ways because you fail to see him and you put man and woman in his place. That's a possibility too, a real possibility.
Christ in this statement of our blessed art, I'll give you an exact instance that I've never forgotten. It's in Ruskin, in his Stones Of Venice. It's a footnote. Now I would put my head on a block, and I haven't seen it for forty some years, where that argument is used against helping the poor, against philanthropy. Notice I used the word philanthropy because we were getting away from charity and going into philanthropy.
See, philanthropy means turning towards man. Now, the idea was it was useless to try to relieve poverty because Christ said the poor are always going to be with you. And why should you try to prove Christ wrong? It was downright blasphemous. That argument was used in the nineteenth century with the old fight with laissez faire and all that, you know.
Now this I admit all of this. I admit it all. But I want to bring something else into the picture. I'll give you a concrete instance. I can't prove this at all, but I've heard it said many times that Saint Patrick's Cathedral, which is a pretty decent looking edifice up there in, you know, the city up there north, It's a rather a beautiful building.
It stands out and stood out when it was built much more than it does now. They say that that was built with the dimes of Irish servants. Wouldn't it have been better to take all of that money that went into that edifice and try to distribute it among the people who need it? Because when it was built, there was plenty of poor, plenty of people who could have used the money. You see, we should try to see everything when we see something.
We're not going to succeed. But this is a big issue. Where is God and where is man? Remember, there's a tremendous difference between philanthropy and Christian charity. In one case, you're seeing the human being.
In the other case, you're seeing God and you can't see God without the human being because Jesus Christ was human and our savior. And so in in all of our activities, I mean all, whether it's cooking a meal in the kitchen, whether it's signing a document which will transfer millions of dollars, whether it's being involved in education, anything at all, we can lose God. With best of our motives, we can be be explicitly to his presence. Blind to what we're doing. Blind to what it's all about.
Blind to what it's all about. It's very easy, you know, and if you if you've read anything of its of the reformation literature of the sixteenth century, you'll know how true this is. When you talk about faith alone is necessary for salvation, which is of course the whole theme of Luther and the Protestants and Calvin, if you take that seriously, where do do good works come in? Of course, Saint James says without good works, your faith is perfectly dead. And Luther's response to that was he booted James out and said it wasn't authentic Bob.
But if you accept James, and if you accept Saint Paul, how do you put them together? Thomas Moore, a John Fisher, a Robert Southwell put their heads on the block for this question because at the root of the Reformation was this question. What is the merit of physical good works? This is the heart of the problem. And so when our blessed lord told us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and ransom the captive and all of this, he was giving us a command which ought to be taken seriously.
But in doing so, let us not lose sight of God. After all, God is God. And men and women, children and infants, and also let us remember the unborn human beings, are his creatures. And it's very easy to lose sight of God in his creatures because they are so beautiful. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.