Encountering Jesus and Learning to Worship at His Feet

As we begin the week called Holy in the Liturgical year, the Gospel text in the Latin Rite of the church tells of Mary, the sister of Martha, anointing the feet of Jesus with aromatic ointment. (John 12:1-11) Matthew, Mark and Luke tell of a similar encounter with another holy woman who encounters Jesus. (Lk. 7, Mark 14, Mt. 26)

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By Deacon Keith Fournier, JD, MTS, MPhil
4/3/2023 (1 year ago)

Published in Living Faith

Keywords: Encounter, Jesus, Faith, Catholic, Gospel

Mark and Matthew add that "wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her."

I am helping to fulfill their prophetic observation, standing on the shoulders of others who have done so throughout two millennia of Christianity, by recounting the beautiful act of worship demonstrated by these women. After all, they were encountering the Word Incarnate, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Worship is the only proper response to such an encounter.
This word encounter is the theological ground of good Christian theology. The God we proclaim as Christians is not a theory, a first mover, of some aloof deity. Our God comes to encounter us, and invites us into an intimate communion with Him.

This word encounter is a key, a lens, what theologians call a hermeneutic, reminding all who bear the name Christian that Christianity is about an ongoing encounter with the Risen Jesus Christ who is ever present to those who have the eyes of living faith to see Him, and hearts willing to respond.

The Risen Jesus always comes to encounter us - in prayer, word, sacrament, one another, the poor, suffering, struggle - you name it. In all of these we can encounter Jesus, even if initially hidden, when we open our hearts to His Mercy and Love, through living faith. This word encounter informs any good ecclesiology, or theology of the Church.

The Church is the place of encounter. The Church is not some-thing but Some-One, the Mystical Body of the Risen Jesus. Jesus is the head of His Body and the head and the Body cannot be separated. Through our participation in the life and mission of the Church we participate in His continuing redemptive mission.

This spirituality of encounter is a treasure for this barren age. The whole Church - and the world into which she is called on mission - desperately needs this spirituality of encounter. Pope Francis often uses the word encounter. In trying to explain his emphasis, some observers point to his relationship with the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation whose founder, Fr. Luigi Giussani, used the word encounter, insisting that Christianity, at its heart, is an encounter with Jesus Christ.

In an encyclical letter released in 2013 and entitled the Light of Faith - which Pope Francis acknowledged was written with the late Pope Benedict - we find the word encounter woven throughout the text. That is because Pope Benedict also, and regularly, emphasized the centrality of an encounter with Jesus Christ. He regularly taught that Christianity is not some-thing, but an encounter with Some-One, the One who lives no more to die, Jesus the Risen Christ. He is encountered through living faith.

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In the Light of Faith, we read:

"Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us." (Light of Faith, #4)

The Woman whose story is told, even to this day as Jesus promised it would be, saw Jesus for who he is and was changed in this encounter with Him. This encounter was not about her, it was about Jesus. She was emptied of herself and thereby able to be filled with Divine Love.

This kind of encounter can still change all men and women who embrace it. These women of prayer teach about of the absolute necessity of living faith and point out to us the path to walk upon if we want to receive such living faith as gift and cultivate it as a fruit.

They are a model for all who want to experience living faith as a light for real life. This path of encounter paves the way into a life of prayer, adoration, contemplation, and love. The posture of Mary, the sister of Martha, mentioned in St John, and the posture of the holy woman mentioned in the synoptic gospels should move us to deeper prayer this week.

Their posture before the Lord, their response to Beauty and Divine Love Incarnate, illuminate the path for all Christians to walk upon. Let us come before the Lord, who is always present to us, but, in a special way present during this Holy Week. Let us ask Him to help us to rediscover, in an age of empty self-idolatry, how to worship at the feet of the Lord by emptying ourself, and anointing His feet with the aromatic ointment of our own adoration and worship.