The poor you will always have with you, Jesus says in defending the woman’s “wasteful” devotion, but you won’t always have me.
The key to understanding this is to recognize that Jesus speaks of the woman pouring oil on His “body.” The key is to recognize the double body of Christ. While Jesus sits at table, the woman pours perfume on His body for burial. Soon that body won’t be there, but Jesus says at the close of the gospel that He will continue to be with them (28:18-20). How? Not in the buried body, but in the risen body, which is present through the agency of the Spirit, and which is present also in the Spirit-filled body of disciples.
Me you will not always have with you, Jesus says, but He will be with them in the body, in the poor, the “least of these My brothers.”
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
