The Holy Week Shadows of St. Joseph: Holy Monday
National Catholic Register, 29 March 2021
Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him. Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil (John 12:1-3).
The Gospel for Monday of Holy Week gives us a domestic scene, Jesus at home, as it were, with his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. It seems that when Jesus came to Jerusalem on pilgrimage that he would at least visit, if not stay with, his friends at Bethany, just two miles from the holy city.
Mary anoints Jesus with costly nard, and the entire house is filled with the fragrance. Judas objects; Jesus explains that it is in anticipation of His death, now just days away.
Commenting on the fragrance that filled the house, St. Augustine wrote, “The world is filled with the fame of a good character: for a good character is like a sweet scent. … Through the good, the name of the Lord is honored” (In Io. Evang. tr. 50, 7).
The primary “good character” at Bethany was the Lord Jesus Himself. It was also the home of a holy family, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Their holiness filled the house with a sweet scent, too.
Jesus was at home at Bethany. Surely it reminded Him of the home in Nazareth, where the Holy Family dwelt together in the sweet scent of holiness. It was St. Joseph who provided that holy home for Jesus there, as had beforehand in Egypt and Bethlehem.
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In his apostolic letter for the beginning of the Year of St. Joseph, Pope Francis cites Polish author Jan Dobraczyński. The Holy Father explains that his novel, The Shadow of the Father, “uses the evocative image of a shadow to define Joseph. In his relationship to Jesus, Joseph was the earthly shadow of the heavenly Father: he watched over him and protected him, never leaving him to go his own way.” (Patris Corde 7)
Nevertheless, Joseph is not present in the Lord’s public life. Yet we might find St. Joseph during Holy Week, if we allow ourselves to imagine where his “shadow” may have fell upon Jesus in those most sacred days.