Today's Gospel reading [John 12:1-11], symbolically set six days before the Passover and read today six days before Easter, provides us a unique introduction to Holy Week.
On his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover festival, Jesus visits his friends in Bethany, Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, his sister Martha, who plays part of the mistress of the house, and their sister Mary, who took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair. Such extravagant display naturally attracted attention and provoked criticism. But, just as Jesus would accept royal kingly honor from the crowds on Palm Sunday, so he accepted this extravagant display from his good friend Mary, giving it a longer-term significance: "Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial."
As we enter this great week - since 1955 it is officially called hebdomada sancta (Holy week), but before that it was known as hebdomada major (the Greater Week) - as we enter this great and. holy week, the Church, like Mary at Bethany, spares no expense. she pulls out all the stops, so to speak, celebrating lavish ceremonies intended to appeal to all our senses, thus to highlight beyond any doubt the importance, the greatness, the. holiness of the events being remembered.
For Holy Week recalls not just some long ago historical occurrence. Just as Jesus died and was buried, so through the Church he invites us to die with him symbolically in the renewal of our own baptismal experience so as to rise with him in his and our eventual resurrection. Then as now, the great and. holy message of this week was not well received by the political powers of the time. Now as then, the great and. holy message of this week again poses a challenge to our world's commitments to power, domination, and control.
Homily for Monday of Holy Week, Saint Paul the Apostle, NY, March 30, 2026.
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