NOTES for Joh 12:1-11

Seeing Mary anoint Christ with fragrant oil, Judas makes the practical suggestion that funds spent in this way should be donated to social needs. The Evangelist notes that Judas had already conceived his betrayal at that moment. Yet had we been there, most of us would probably have found Judas’s argument convincing, so closely did his reasoning accord with everyday “common sense.” The reaction of the other apostles, who did not become traitors, was similar. But what Mary did was a manifestation of love that exceeded and disrupted the customary course of daily life, which was perceived as an unshakable norm.

Practicality, however, proves to be a temptation, and even the need for social service, justified in itself, can become a pretext for doing evil and rejecting love. Christ does not reject the need for practical service at all. His words that you always have the poor with you point precisely to the need to help those in need; they do not deny almsgiving, as some would like to interpret them. Nor does He reject Martha’s household service. But without love, social programs degenerate. Is this not the root of the collapse of the social experiments of the twentieth century?