Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scriptures, we are all reminded yet again of everything which the Lord our most loving, kind and merciful God had done for our sake, which He showed us all through His own Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Whose actions and sufferings had been foretold even by the prophets and messengers of God in the past, just as we heard it again through the readings of the Scriptures. These are meant to help us deepen our understanding of the significance of everything that we commemorate and remember throughout this most momentous and solemn Holy Week, so that we may truly appreciate how blessed and beloved each and every one of us have been, by our most loving God.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of the prophet Isaiah in which the Lord spoke through His servant Isaiah regarding the coming of His salvation, grace and love which He would do through a Servant that He would send into the midst of His beloved people. And most importantly, that Servant would be the One through Whom the Lord would bring about His salvation and grace to all, fulfilling everything that He has promised to all of His beloved people throughout time. God has always remembered His love and kindness, His compassion and mercy to those whom He cared for, and He sent all of His love manifested perfectly and shown to us through His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He is the One Whom the Lord had spoken through His prophet Isaiah in a prophecy to keep His people in His hope and light.

However, this same Servant, the Son of God and Son of Man, would have to suffer greatly for this purpose, as He has to endure the most bitter and painful sufferings and difficulties, in the midst of His mission. And today as we are already in the midst of this Holy Week, we are reminded of all that Our Lord and Saviour had done for our sake, in His great and ever enduring love for each and every one of us, for the sake of our salvation. He took up His Cross willingly and endured the worst of humiliations, sufferings out of His love, in His desire to lead us all back to His Heavenly Father, reuniting all of us wholly and perfectly with our loving God, Father and Creator. He showed us all just how great God’s love is, that it even transcended beyond our sins and faults, which He would willingly forgive if we all seek Him for His forgiveness and desire to be reconciled with Him.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard of the Lord and His interactions with Mary, one of His close friends, and also with one of His close disciples, namely that of Judas Iscariot, whom we now know as the one who would betray the Lord Jesus. Judas was likely an intelligent person, as he was entrusted with the finances of the whole group. If Judas had been uneducated and illiterate, it was unlikely that he would have been given such a responsibility. It was in this occasion that Judas criticised Mary when she went to anoint the Lord’s feet with expensive perfume made from pure nard. Judas criticised Mary’s actions, saying that the expensive perfume could have been sold and the proceeds could have been used to help the poor according to what he said. However the Gospel passage also gave a context, in that Judas was not being truthful or sincere in what he said.

That was because he was actually hoping to gain for his own benefit from stealing from the funds that he himself had managed on behalf of the group. Judas Iscariot was indeed a dishonest man and he did not genuinely follow the Lord wholeheartedly, allowing himself to be tempted by worldly desires, by the temptations of money and material possessions. The Lord knew all these, and he rebuked Judas and said that what Mary had done was right, just and virtuous. He told everyone that she was in fact preparing His Body for burial, and this was yet another important premonition of what would soon happen, as the time for the Lord’s Passion, His suffering and death was about to come at that time. Of course at that moment, no one would have realised this meaning and importance, but for all of us who have known what happened next, it was a truly important moment.

In contrast to Judas’ prideful and condescending attitude, Mary showed great humility before the Lord, wiping the feet of the Lord with her own hairs after having wet them with her tears. The hair is a woman’s greatest asset and the crown of her beauty, and for Mary to have used her own hair to wipe the Lord’s feet, a body part traditionally considered as dirty and filthy, it must have indeed been very significant, together with the fact that she wept as she was doing so. All of these indicated just how much she loved the Lord and had faith in Him, and also her recognition of her own sinfulness and wicked nature, her unworthiness before God. These are the attitudes which all of us should have in our own lives and faith, that we all should also be humble in seeking God’s mercy and forgiveness, in embracing His generous mercy and compassionate love.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore having heard from the readings of the Scriptures today, let us all therefore reflect on how we can transform our lives for the better. Each and every one of us have been reminded and called to return once again to God’s most generous love, and to embrace His forgiveness and mercy. He has always loved us all and He has always been ready to welcome us back to Himself, opening His hands as always to embrace us all with His most generous and awesome love. However, we also have to commit ourselves to His path and show the willingness to embrace HIs mercy and love. Otherwise, we cannot truly and fully enjoy the fruits of the Lord’s forgiveness, mercy and compassion.

Let us all therefore once again seek the Lord with a contrite heart and with sorrow for our many sins and wickedness, regret and desire to be forgiven from all those evil things we have said, done and committed in our past lives and actions. Let us all seek God’s most wonderful mercy and forgiveness, and do our best so that we may receive fully God’s amazing grace and love, and be restored completely in faith and truth, now and always, forevermore. Amen.