Monday, April 11 : Saint Jerome

In Mark’s Gospel we read that: “When he was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of costly perfumed oil” (14:3). Now this woman is of direct concern to you who are about to receive baptism. She broke open the alabaster jar so that Christ, the Lord’s Anointed, might make christians of you by anointing. This is exactly what the Song of Songs says: “Your name spoken is a spreading perfume – that is why the maidens love you. Draw me. We will follow eagerly!” (Sg 1:3-4). So long as the perfume was enclosed; so long as God was known only in Judah; so long as his name was great only in Israel (Ps 76[75]), the maidens did not follow Jesus. But no sooner was that perfume poured out into all the world than believing souls followed the Lord… She broke her alabaster flask so that all might benefit from its perfume…; this action calls to mind the “grain of wheat” that unless it “falls to the ground and dies” does not “produce much fruit” (Jn 12:24). Even so, if the flask is not broken, we cannot anoint ourselves with perfume. This woman is not the same as the one another Gospel refers to as having washed the Lord’s feet (Lk 7,38). That particular woman, who had been a sinner of bad reputation up to then…, covers the Savior’s feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair. She only seems to wash the Savior’s feet, however, while in reality she is being washed of her sins… Let it be the same for those of you about to receive baptism. Since we are all sinners and “none is clean of defilement, however short his days” (Jb 14:4 LXX)… begin by grasping the Savior’s feet, wash them with your tears, dry them with your hair and when you have done that, you will touch his head like the woman in Mark. When you go down into the spring of life together with the Savior, you are to learn how this perfume reaches the head of the Savior. For, if “Christ is the head of every man” (1 Cor 11:3), your head must also be perfumed. And it is by baptism that you will receive this anointing.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team