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![Text Box: Consecrated Contemplative Life: What a Waste!
No...What a Grace!
The following is the homily given by Father Lou Caporiccio, Master of Novices for the Fathers of Mercy. For the First Reading I chose Hosea 2:16, 21-22 and for the Second Reading Philippians 3:9-14. After prayer and reflection I desired strongly to use the Gospel from St. Mark 14:3-9. Lo and behold this was not to be found in the Lectionary! I was very surprised. We received permission from good Bishop John McRaith to use this Gospel on this most beautiful day.
In our Gospel reading today we notice there is a complaint. Some are indignant, even infuriated that this unnamed woman would come into the presence of the Lord and pour out all over his head costly perfumed oil, genuine spikenard. We’re told it cost 300 days wages. Almost a whole year’s worth of work to buy this perfume and they saw it as a waste, throwing it away. This is interesting because many people will look at Sister John Mary and they will say: “She’s so young...talented.” “She’s full of life, vigor.” “What would she want to take these vows for?” “It is a waste, a terrible, terrible waste.” But it is interested because no one would go up to a woman who is about to be married and say “Gee, it’s too bad you’re going to marry Jim. You’re wasting yourself on Jim. Now you won’t be able to marry John or Robert or David or James.” No one would say that to a woman about to be married. She is doing what all people who are in love do…she pours herself out in a great gift of love, wholly, totally, completely and without reserve for the sake of her Beloved. No one looks at marriage negatively: “I can’t do this.” “I can’t do that.” It is something positive. We need to look at religious life like that. Oh, there are negatives here just like there are in marriage but we need to look at it as something positive. Religious life is a life of love. It is really a life of love. What Sister John Mary is doing today is responding to God’s love for her. She says with St. Paul in our 2nd Reading: “I consider everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing (we could say ‘experiencing’) Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Look at the 1st Reading of the Prophet Hosea. He has some words of God recorded. He says: “I will allure her.” “I will lead her into the desert.” “I will speak to her heart.” “I will espouse her to me forever.” God is trying to woo His beloved! He is trying to win the heart of the one He loves!
Sr. John Mary’s response to God’s love is much like that of the woman in our Gospel, who loved Jesus very deeply, very passionately. “[She] came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly spikenard. She BROKE the alabaster jar and poured it on his [Jesus’] head.” If you notice that this woman did not do what you and I would do. We would take that costly perfume and pour it out one drop at a time. No, she broke it! Poured the whole thing at once completely over the head of our Lord. When we pour ourselves out as a great gift this is a proper response of love. Sr. John Mary’s response to our Lord’s alluring her, to His leading her, to His speaking to her heart, is to pour herself out completely in one great and beautiful act, namely, the professing of her vows. Is this not the response a woman gives on the day of her marriage? “I take you for my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
She gives herself as a gift. She gives herself completely without reserve. Sr. John Mary will do the same when she utters her vows. “I vow to Promote Devotion to and Grateful Remembrance of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, and to express it in my style of life. I also vow Chastity, Poverty, Obedience and to live in Enclosure perpetually, . . . I promise to lead a life of love . . .”
My friends, when we respond to love what happens to us? We become transformed by that Love. We become transformed. St. Paul says in the second reading. “To know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death . . .” To use the words of sister’s founder: St. Paul of the Cross, there is a Mystical Death and a Mystical Nativity.
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