NOTES for Mar 14:1-31

The matter is moving toward its resolution. The true traits of the characters and their real desires appear more and more clearly. The scribes and Pharisees no longer argue. They have lost every argument. And this did not convince them, did not stop them, did not make them doubt. "Brood of vipers," as John called them. They argued with the Truth for a long time; now all that remains is to kill it. At last they have openly understood their real desire: "to take Him by stealth and kill Him." They had done this in their hearts long ago. They are concerned only that the people not think anything bad of them.

The woman, however, "who was known in the city as a sinner," could have feared anger and condemnation. It is impossible for her to hide her vices. Yet she is the one who brings the precious ointment. The impulse of her heart draws her irresistibly to Jesus. In it everything is expressed: love, gratitude, repentance. She does not think about what people will say about her.

Judas finally goes to carry out his betrayal. He too has made his decision.

What else can Jesus still manage to do for us, for His disciples, for people? What could He do at all? Give Himself. Remain with us. The Paschal Meal with the disciples continues to this day. Jesus comes to us, as He promised, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The covenant with God, the New Covenant, is renewed at every Liturgy. The Bread and Wine, transformed by His Spirit, nourish and satisfy each one: "...and they all drank of it." He remains faithful to the end and forever. And our heart rejoices after Communion, as did the disciples: they "sang a hymn."

At the same time, however, another theme runs through the passage: the theme of betrayal. Judas betrays. Peter will deny Him. The disciples are distressed and doubt themselves: "Is it I?" They do not know what is in their heart. They would like to "die with Him," but it turns out they cannot. They still cannot decide. And we?

And why does this keep happening to us? Everything has been given to us: wisdom, truth, love, life. Yet we doubt, deny, and often betray. Is it possible to remain faithful to the end? What is our decision? What is in our heart?

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.

One of the unique, endlessly valuable, and dear qualities of the Gospel of Mark is that it notices living, one could even say everyday, details, details that seem insignificant but always turn out to be filled with immense meaning. Remember how he alone among the Synoptics notes that blind Bartimaeus throws off his cloak before coming to Jesus. Here, in today's reading, he alone notes that the woman broke the jar. It is a simple, highly visual image, but it is filled with the deepest meaning. Let us rest our prayerful gaze on it today. Why did she do this? The first answer is that nothing would ever be poured into that jar again. This is a remarkable interpretation, found in modern exegesis, and it is fully true. By doing this she brought the moment to completion. But let us allow ourselves one more interpretation. Let us remember that this woman is a sinner, as the evangelists portray her. And what is this state of sin for her? Let us remember the psalms. "Because of all my enemies I have become a reproach, even to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I am forgotten in their hearts like one dead; I am like a broken vessel, for I hear the slander of many; terror is on every side, as they take counsel together against me, plotting to take my life (Ps 31:12-14)." The wholeness of the vessel from which myrrh is poured on the head of Jesus, and its brokenness as soon as it ceases to serve Him. Wholeness with God, brokenness in the hands of sin. Or simply the impossibility, the uselessness of a thing, and of a person, "I am like a broken vessel," if it does not serve Christ.

The feast is approaching, and division takes place. It is not only that Christ's opponents, preparing murder, are far more concerned about the people's possible reaction to bloodshed during the feast than about the monstrous nature of the execution itself. The division is also that the separation foretold by the Teacher takes place among His disciples.

By pouring precious perfume on Jesus, the woman performs an extravagant, impractical act that does not fit notions of normal behavior. The disciples' reaction corresponds to "common sense": why not use such value for charitable needs? John testifies that Judas said this, but Mark speaks of some disciples. This means the confusion was shared by a group. And yet would the reaction of most of us be different?

The visible manifestation of love, with its seeming madness, troubled the disciples and became one of the stones over which one of them stumbled. But faith, hope, and love cannot always be justified by calculation, and yet how often those who were guided by them did the impossible.

In everyday life, of course, there is no need to reject thrift or practical sobriety; they have their legitimate place in the world. Still, one should not forget the bankruptcy of the calculating Judas.

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."

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.

Is Jesus really suggesting that we, with a ruble clenched in our fist and with Him beside us, healthy, tall, and strong, and this beggar beside Him, dirty, sick, half-dressed, make a choice and give the ruble to Jesus?

No, of course not. From everything He says, something quite different follows: when there is a choice between doing something good for this specific Jesus standing nearby or for some abstract beggar in general, the choice should be made in favor of Jesus. But when we stand face to face with a specific beggar who stretches out his hand to us, then there is no choice at all, because Jesus Himself said: "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me."

Is Jesus really proposing us that having fisted some money, we should choose between Him - healthy, big, strong and this poor man - dirty, sick, half dressed, and give Him this money? Of course not, another thing comes out from what Jesus says: when we have to choose to do good either to Jesus, or to an abstract poor, the choice has to be for the benefit of Jesus. But when we have to make the choice with a concrete poor, who stretches out his hand to us, then there is no choice to be made here, because Jesus said Himself: " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.".

The Savior once spoke of how important it is that the soul, likened to a swept room, should not remain empty after being freed from an unclean spirit. And now Christ enters the prepared upper room to fill it with His presence and, in this clean place on the eve of His Passion, to unite the disciples with Himself through the Bread and Wine—uniting them while knowing their hearts and foreseeing the confusion of the coming night...

When the disciples heard that one of them would commit betrayal, they began asking one another, “Who? Is it I?” An anxious conscience compelled each of them to look within, and no one reproached the Teacher either for bias or for the injustice of His accusation.

Even when abandoned by His closest disciples, He remained united with them through His Body and Blood. Abandoned by the whole world, He Himself abandoned no one.

How often the question is asked: "What are Judas, Pilate, and the high priests guilty of if Jesus still had to suffer and be killed? Otherwise He would not have died."

Here everything is turned upside down. These people do not become murderers because Jesus has to die; rather, Jesus has to die because people are murderers. By his fall, man brought human death into the world. More than that, the first human death came not from disease or from an earthquake, but from a brother's hand. We are all sinners, and sin is death; we are all murderers. And the only non-murderer who came into this world was doomed. But what horrifies is the inner darkness, and therefore the "quality" of life, of those who become executors of this act of this world.

This question is too often asked: "why are Judas, Pilate and the high priests guilty if Jesus has in any case to suffer and be killed? In a different way, He would not have died".

Everything is upset here. Jesus has to die not because these people become murderers, but rather because they are murderers. Man brought death in the world by his fall, worse than that, the first death of man occurred not of disease, nor earthquakes, but of the hands of his own brother. We are all sinners, and sin leads to death, therefore we are all murderers. Now the Only non-murderer, Who came in this world was condemned. But internal darkness (that is and the "quality" of life too) dismays, horrifies those that become executors of this action of the whole world.

How often something said "in general" is received better than something addressed personally. The prophecy of the coming betrayal stirred a lively response in the disciples and moved them once again to look into themselves. But the impartial warning addressed personally to Peter was rejected by him. In his objections one hears wounded pride: that cannot happen; after all, I am so good.

And immediately Peter dozed off, leaving Christ alone with the God-forsakenness of Gethsemane. Coming up for a moment, the Savior calls him not Peter, but Simon. At that moment Simon son of Jonah is already, and yet still not, a rock.

Those who asked themselves, "Is it I?" ran away, but they had not promised that they would not waver under any circumstances. They showed weakness, but they did not commit betrayal and did not deny Him.

How often it is unbearable for us to hear bitter reproach from those around us; we immediately want to dispute unpleasant accusations. But without accepting the unbearable truth about ourselves, we will hardly be able to get rid of our own refuse.

When reading the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper and of everything that followed, one cannot help asking: could it have been otherwise? And if it could not, if "the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him," does this not mean that no one is guilty of anything, that all the participants in those events were merely acting out a drama, not written by them, predetermined in advance so that none of them could change anything in it? But why, then, does Jesus Himself, speaking of the inevitability of what is happening, immediately add: "but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed"? Perhaps, after all, there is inevitability and there is inevitability. Indeed, after the fall, the earthly path of the Messiah could not be without obstacles; one way or another it had to end in suffering and death. And yet, even in such a state of affairs, everyone is free to make the decision he considers right. Yes, in a fallen world every community inevitably has its own Judas; but this does not predetermine the specific choice of a specific person, and for that very reason responsibility for the choice he has made is not removed from him. Besides, none of the participants in that drama was, quite obviously, thinking about any predestination. Beautiful stories in the style of Leonid Andreyev are out of place here, and this is perhaps the most frightening thing of all. Jesus simply got in the way of many people, for different but entirely earthly reasons. And if so, then however sorrowful it is to admit, any of us could potentially have found ourselves in the place of His persecutors. The choice always remains. The main thing is for it to be the right one.

Why does Jesus not answer such a burning question about times and dates? Does God really deliberately hide such an important fact from people? Indeed, if only we knew the exact date of the coming triumph of the Kingdom... Still, it is not so simple to say unambiguously what any of us would do in that case. One cannot even be sure that everyone would take such a revelation seriously. And yet, as is well known, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and each person decides for himself how to respond to a warning. In any case, for those who take spiritual life seriously, the situation would become noticeably simpler: they would not have to remain in a state of continuous spiritual, and perhaps not only spiritual, tension, expecting every day the main event of their life. Besides, Jesus Himself says that even He does not know the time of His own return. Why is this so? Maybe the point is not that something is being hidden from us, but that the time has not been fixed? After all, the history of the Kingdom is, above all, the history of those who live in it and bear witness to it, the history of Christian righteousness, which is determined not only by God's will but also by the choice of those people whom God calls. And then it inevitably turns out that the time of the Messiah's return and the triumph of the Kingdom depends not only on God, but also on us.