Monday, March 30 : Origen
The Bride of the Song of Songs says: «My spikenard has yielded its odor» (1,12)…; but we could also read: «His odor»… The Bride came in to the Bridegroom and anointed him with her ointments; and in some marvellous way the spikenard, scentless so long as it was with the Bride, yielded its odor when it touched the Bridegroom’s body; with the result, apparently, not that he has received something from it, but rather that the spikenard has received from him… Let us see the Bride Church in this passage in the character of that Mary of whom it is said with all fitness that she brings a pound of ointment of great price, and anoints the feet of Jesus, and wipes them with her hair. Through the hair of her head she as it were gets that ointment back, and receives it again for herself, steeped in the character and virtue of Jesus’ body… Thus she has put on her head the fragrance of Christ, rather than that of the nard. Wherefore she says: “My spikenard, having been given to the body of Christ, has yielded me back His odour”… This surely shows that the odour of the teaching that proceeds from Christ, and the fragrance of the Holy Spirit have filled the whole house of the world, or else the whole house of the Church. Or, indeed, it has filled the whole house of the soul, who has received a share in the odour of Christ, in the first place, by offering Him the gift of her faith as the ointment of spikenard, and then receiving back the grace of the Holy Spirit and the fragrance of spiritual teaching…, so that she too may say: “We are a good odour … unto God” (2Cor 2,15). And, because that ointment was full of faith and of precious, loving intention, Jesus himself bore witness to her saying: “She has wrought a good work upon me” (Mk 14,6).
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team
