Main news for 20 December 2016

Church history knows many disputes about the purpose of the Church, about the tasks before her, about her role in society. Incidentally, helping the poor and dispossessed, what today is usually called social ministry, was considered one of the most important forms of church activity. But Jesus, evaluating the act of the woman who anointed Him with myrrh, points to something more important that the Church has: Himself.

What, then, do His words mean when He says that we do "not always" have Him? Of course, this also concerns what awaited the apostles ahead, when He Himself would have to go to the cross. But that is not the whole matter. The point is also that social problems, poverty among them, have existed and will exist as long as fallen humanity has existed and will exist. But the Kingdom has never been in the world and never will be; it comes into the world from outside, and it does not come by itself. The Messiah sent by God brings it with Him.

Therefore the chief task of the Church in every age has been to carry the Kingdom into the world and bear witness to it. All other forms of church activity are only means for solving this chief task, because everything else church communities do could be entrusted to other organizations not directly connected with the Church. But no one except the Church can bear witness to the Kingdom and carry it into the world. That is why Jesus draws His disciples' attention to what is the foundation and meaning of their community's existence: to Himself and to the Kingdom He has brought into the world.

Speaking about the poor, whom His disciples always had, and about Himself, whom they did not always have with them, Jesus draws attention to the system of priorities characteristic of normal Christian life. The main problem here is that Christians in every age have looked at Christianity, first, primarily as a religion, and second, as a practical religion, a religion of "good works."

This view was greatly encouraged by the fact that Jesus Himself places love at the center: love for God, for Him Himself, and for one another. In practice, people often forgot about love for God and for Christ, while love for neighbor was understood precisely as a religion of "good works." Of course, love for Christ too was formally remembered, but it was somehow taken for granted. Unlike the poor, He apparently needs no help, especially now, after the resurrection, after the ascension, after He already sits at the right hand of the Father, while neighbors remain in a much less favorable state and need that very practical help.

If in Christian history the emphasis was placed on love for Christ, it often poured itself out into something overly sweet and emotional, and at times even frankly sensual, so that people observing such religiosity from the outside reasonably thought it would be better to follow the path of practical service, the path of the religion of "good works," than to give oneself to such strange and sometimes unhealthy religious exaltation. Usually this was formulated in the sense that love for Christ and for God is taken for granted, and it is manifested in those same "good works" for the benefit of one's neighbor. Meanwhile, Jesus reminds His disciples that Christianity first of all presupposes intense relations with Him Himself, and only then everything else.

Love is not emotion and not exaltation; it is will and a spiritual state. Such a spiritual state, however, does not appear or sustain itself on its own. It must be cultivated, and here constant concentration on Christ and on relations with Him is necessary, concentration of the will, not intellectual or emotional-sensual concentration. Love as a spiritual state is born from these relations and is sustained by this effort of the will. Like every love, it presupposes purposeful spiritual effort and the spiritual work of two. Any good works, if they are to be good without quotation marks, must be derived from the love that binds the disciple to Jesus. They must be done and exist in the space of relations that bind the one doing them to Jesus. The poor will indeed always be found, but whether there will be relations depends on the person. That is why Jesus draws the disciples' attention to Himself: without Him, "good works" will remain good only in quotation marks, however hard the people doing them may try to do them "for Christ's sake."

In today's reading Christ stops those who, out loud and in His presence, condemn the woman because she poured ointment on His head. In the Gospel there are only a few examples of such an offering of a gift to Christ. The first were the Magi on the day of His birth.

Christ says to the people condemning the woman: "Why do you trouble her?" It happens that in some impulse of the soul, in an aspiration of the heart, we perform personal and sincere acts for which we are mocked and condemned. This woman, in a kind of silent love and openness of heart, poured out precious ointment. She brought a gift. "Throughout the whole world this will be told in memory of her."

In the text we do not find her words. But Christ says: "She has done what she could; she has anointed My Body beforehand for burial." This woman is one of those silent witnesses and workers of Christ, like those who gave the donkey colt before the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, or the room where He could eat the Passover. And this woman became a witness to the path of Christ: the path of Christ's life, execution, burial, and Resurrection in glory and for the salvation of the world.