Today's reading includes several episodes linked by one theme: the theme of faithfulness and betrayal...
Today's reading includes several episodes linked by one theme: the theme of faithfulness and betrayal. It begins with the story of the woman who anointed Jesus with precious aromatic oil ("myrrh") (vv. 1-11). It is noteworthy that the description of the event itself is preceded here by a mention of the chief priests' and scribes' desire to kill Jesus (vv. 1-2), and immediately after it follows a mention of Judas's betrayal (vv. 10-11), so that the story of Jesus' anointing and the story of Judas's betrayal merge into one and become a single story. In the evangelist's account, Judas's betrayal is somehow connected with the act of the woman who poured the oil on Jesus' head. It would seem that there can be no connection here, especially since the thought of betrayal, as usually happens, must have arisen in Judas's mind long before the final decision was made. But it is entirely possible that at that moment something in the situation became the final push after which he decided to carry out what he had long been planning. A clue in this case may be the mention of the indignation openly shown by some of those present, who considered such use of costly oil too wasteful (vv. 4-5). But Jesus at once puts everything in its place: first He Himself, and only then help for the poor (vv. 6-9). And in this way He points us to one of the most important laws of spiritual life: concrete, living relationships with God and with Christ are more important than anything else, while everything else, even something as important as works of mercy, is only a consequence of those relationships. The poor will always be in the world. Plans to rid the world completely of poverty are utopian, and charity, evidently, does not have that as its goal. It is only a means to something else, a way of expressing one's love for a neighbor who needs help. And if this deeply personal relationship to the one you help disappears, charity ceases to be a work of love and becomes an abstract idea, which of course can also be served, like any idea, but which in that case ceases to be mercy in the Gospel sense. Gospel love is not an idea and not an emotion; it is a relationship, and therefore, unlike ideas or emotions, which are often quite abstract, it is always utterly concrete. And therefore at the Last Supper, where this relationship of Jesus to His disciples is revealed in all its fullness, the bread and wine become His Body and His Blood (vv. 22-25). Every sacred meal among believing Jews was always, above all, an expression of spiritual unity and brotherly love, the very thing that reaches its ultimate fullness in Gospel love. And the more clearly this unity and this love were revealed, the more spirit there was in such a meal and the less there was of pure, unspiritualized nature. But the love of an ordinary person never by itself reaches the fullness that can completely transform nature and spiritualize it. This is available only to the One who bears in Himself the whole fullness of God and can love to the end, so that in His relationship to the one He loves there is no longer any place for untransformed nature. And then before us are no longer bread and wine, as before, but Body and Blood, which unite us quite truly with the One who came to give us the Kingdom. Yet precisely this depth of relationship can become unbearable for someone who is not ready to trust to the end. It is impossible to follow Jesus only in the name of an idea; without a personal relationship with Him, without the love that He gives to everyone who is ready to trust Him, such a campaign can end only in spiritual collapse. Apparently this is exactly what happened to Judas, who may well have been ready to accept Jesus as a leader and ideological inspiration, but apparently did not love Him at all. And this lack of love led Judas to spiritual collapse, which in his case turned into betrayal of the Teacher. And the push, evidently, was precisely that Jesus pointed to Himself as the main thing His disciples had. For here it was necessary to accept Jesus Himself, not as the leader of a movement or the bearer of an idea, but precisely Himself, as a Person, as a Man who simply had to be loved, loved humanly, as friends are loved. To love, or to betray. This is the choice before which, at some moment in his spiritual life, everyone stands who has decided for some reason to follow Jesus. It is the choice on which depends whether we will be in the Kingdom or in darkness.
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