Extreme Spirituality

Imitating Jesus’ extravagant love during Holy Week

04/11/2022

Jn 12:1-11 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. Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions. So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Have you heard of the modern phenomenon called “extreme sports”? It is a competition, like all sports where people want to win, but it also involves a high degree of risk, danger, and possible death. A couple of years ago Ben Riley, a seminarian at the time, spent the summer here at I.C. He loved rock-climbing, and he invited me and Fr. Daniel to watch the movie “Free Solo”. Free solo is a form of mountain climbing in which you do not use ropes to catch you if you fall. In other words, if you slip and fall, you will die.

Other extreme sports include bungee jumping, volcano boarding, and street luge. I know all that sounds crazy, but I believe all extreme sports participants are trying to push the normal limits of human endurance in order to touch the transcendent. They want to go beyond what seems possible. There is, therefore, a subtle spiritual impulse in every extreme sport.

Archbishop Fulton once insightfully remarked that the modern world always picks up what the Church puts down. In the 1960’s and 1970’s tens of thousands of priests and nuns left their vocations to return to the world and get married and have normal jobs. That is why St. Scholastica and St. Anne high schools closed. In other words, priests and nuns and monks participate in an extreme sport called “celibacy”. But when we put down that sport, the world picked it up in the form of cheap counterfeits like bungee jumping and volcano boarding. In both cases, though, we find the human desire to exceed the limits of human endurance and touch the transcendent. Some people live their Christian faith as an extreme sport.

In the gospel today we meet one of the earliest participants of the extreme sport of Christianity, namely, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. We witness her extreme and extravagant faith where we read: “Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair”. Judas, on the other hand, whose impulses were not spiritual but always calculating and capitalistic, objects and complains Mary’s gesture was too extreme.

But Jesus admonishes Judas saying: “Leave her alone”. Indeed, Jesus would be the pioneer of the extreme sport of Christianity by mounting the cross on Good Friday, a spiritual sport that involved a high degree of risk, danger and eventual death. Like going free solo, Jesus used no safety ropes but trusted totally in his Father to catch him when he fell.

This was not the first time, of course, that Mary displayed this tendency to extremes. Remember in Lk 10 where Jesus visits Martha and Mary and Mary ignores the household chores to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to him? Mary was a kind of nun in a convent ready to go to extremes to follow Jesus. Mary was picking up the extravagant love, the extreme sport, that Jesus was putting down.

My friends, today is Monday of Holy Week and we will learn this week exactly the kind of extreme sport that Christianity is in the example of Jesus. For instance, today in Little Rock at the Cathedral the bishop and priests will gather to celebrate the Chrism Mass. The bishop will bless the three sacred oils we use in the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, ordination and the anointing of the sick.

And we priests will renew our commitment to follow Christ, especially in celibacy. In ancient Greece athletes anointed their bodies with oil so their muscles could perform at peak levels. We are blessed with the oils of the sacraments so we can participate in the extreme sport of Christianity, which can involve risk, danger and even possible death. If you don’t believe me, just ask the martyrs.

On Holy Thursday, Jesus gives us his Body and Blood in the form of Bread and Wine. And on Good Friday, he dies on the Cross and demonstrates the limits of his extravagant, extreme love. And on Good Friday, Christians will participate a little in that extreme sport of faith by abstaining from meat, fasting, and praying. And I am convinced some Christians will go far beyond the minimum: they won’t eat anything but bread and water, and some will stay awake all night, not falling asleep like the apostles.

We may object like Judas: “Oh, come on! Don’t go to such extremes! Be reasonable, careful and don’t take such risks to life and limb!” But look around at the young people fanatical about extreme sports. They have picked up what Christians have put down. Holy Week is time for us to pick that up again.

Praised be Jesus Christ!