Posted by The WORD in other words (2009) by Fr Roland Aquino SVD – Saint Jude Catholic School, Manila
Monday in Holy Week – Lent
There’s a truth in what caring people usually remind us: at a younger age, health is often sacrificed for wealth; at a later age, wealth is sacrificed for health. This can be summed up by giving value to both: health is wealth.
The best business that often thrives well is that which concerns aging and health. People spend much money and time to appear young, to eliminate signs of aging, and to conceal old age. Some even say, if you want make older people happy, make a guess of their age to be younger than their actual age by half.
As proven by medical science, there’s no way we can prolong life, nor alter the course of the aging process. Money cannot buy or sustain the fountain of youth. At a certain point, we come to face the reality of our own mortality. For some who are healthy, even at old age, death is accepted in peace.
Business can even flourish in death, but only in relation to funerals and graveyard marketing. Investment in death is now a common business venture. We see constructions of hotel-like columbaria, ossuaries, and other memorial parks everywhere. People now are more aware and open to such inevitable end in the grave.
Jesus comes deeper our understanding of the bitterest ending of his human life in death. He comes to Bethany, a place of death and rising to life of Lazarus, and a place of costly anointing reserved for burial, and of betrayal.
Jesus’s coming to Lazarus suggests that his eventual ending is not so much to climax in death as a defeat but rather in rising to life as a triumph. Beyond Jesus’s death is God’s glory where the ultimate end of man finds fulfillment.
Mary has chosen a good investment in the death of Jesus. The three hundred days’ wages worth of perfumed oil is nothing to account for when given to Jesus for a meaningful death. She is overwhelmed by such faith that such anointing promises a return of resurrection. Judas Iscariot has done exactly the opposite. He has chosen money at the expense of resurrection and life in God. He is overwhelmed only by the mere and apparent ending of Jesus in the grace, and nothing more beyond that.
There’s no way we can stop aging; there’s no way we can escape death. At a certain point we will finally come to face our own mortality. The death of Jesus is a promise of life. There is meaning in death; there is hope beyond the grave. The promised wealth of eternal life promises gives life a new meaning. And this is where one finds a healthy business of choosing what is good, of being happy and meaningful, and being at service to others.
The danger is, we can easily fall into the trap of taking the option of Judas because of our attraction to money.
When we come to believe that true riches lie in life eternal, as the gospel points to us time and again, then we come to understand the value and the worth of every investment we give in death.
