Monday in Holy Week: Mary Anoints Jesus

Mary Anoints Jesus

Why was this ointment not turned into cash?

Don't the poor deserve it?

One of the anecdotes I heard from my mother, probably passed on from her father, was of the episode in Tortilla Flat when John Steinbeck's ne'er-do-wells find something good to do with their money beside pool it for a dollar gallon of California red.

They buy a candlestick for the altar of the church.

What did they do that for? Poor deluded souls, misguided by the authorities, they could have spent that on themselves, maybe pulled themselves up out of the pot-swilling life they were leading.

They choose to do something beautiful for God.

And I think, now that I have reflected on it, they put something beautiful into their own lives. For them, the sanctuary of the church was the most permanent interior they knew. And it was therefore a refuge for them, a homeplace.

One Wednesday evening when I was volunteering as a counselor at the evening shelter for the homeless clients of the Berkeley Emergency Food Project, it was movie night. So the screen was set up, and a movie chosen. I noted, and remarked to one of the patrons, that the videocassette said on it, only for home use, not for public display. And he replied, this is our living room.

Jesus finds us where we are, and makes his home with us. He becomes our living room. And if we find room in our hearts, they can be the doorway to the living room, the safe place in which to dwell, that has room for all of us to share, all of us to be in our homeplace.