The Last Week of Jesus' Life
What did Jesus do the last week of his life? As we know, the gospels are not a diary of Jesus’ life. So we can’t say for certain what he did on each day leading up to Good Friday. But by piecing together the four gospels, we can come up with a possible scenario. His last week could have looked something like this. (more…)
The Last Week of Jesus’ Life
What did Jesus do the last week of his life? As we know, the gospels are not a diary of Jesus’ life. So we can’t say for certain what he did on each day leading up to Good Friday. But by piecing together the four gospels, we can come up with a possible scenario. His last week could have looked something like this. (more…)
Our Marvelous Sense of Smell
Our sense of smell is a marvelous gift we sometimes take for granted. Let’s take a few minutes today to reflect on this gift. Some of the information here is from Diane Ackerman’s fascinating book, A Natural History of the Senses.
Our olfactory cells are located in the backmost recesses of our nose. Every breath we take passes over these cells.
This means we are smelling constantly. Our nose knows no rest. (I had fun writing that sentence!) The other four senses get “time off” every now and then. The human nose has 5 million olfactory cells. That might seem like a lot until we learn that a sheepdog has 220 million and can smell 44 times better than we can. Many other animals can smell better than we lowly humans. Pigs can smell truffles under 6 inches of soil. Salmon can smell the distant waters of their birth. And a male butterfly can smell a female butterfly miles away.
Watch a dog going for a walk. It is constantly sniffing the sidewalk, the grass, a tree, a rock. One sniff tells the dog what other dog has been there, its age, sex, mood, health, and when it passed! For a dog, says Ackerman, sniffing is “like reading the gossip column of the morning newspaper.” Our human sense of smell is inferior to many other animals simply because we don’t need it as much to survive. Though our sense of smell is somewhat feeble, it can still detect thousands of different scents even in infinitesimal quantities. (So don’t turn up your nose at your nose!)
Our sense of smell is the only sense that has a direct connection to our brain. This helps make smell our most evocative sense. One whiff of a scent can recall vivid memories. Once, when I was in my 40’s, I was walking through the perfume aisle of a store. Suddenly, before my brain had time to process anything, I was recalling Grand Marais, Michigan where I had vacationed in the summer as a teenager. What had happened? I had caught the scent of a particular perfume I wore in Michigan as a 16-year-old girl. That scent had the power to transport me back in time and place!
Our sense of smell is also linked to the parts of the brain that process emotion. I walked into a Czech restaurant once and immediately got this warm and happy feeling. Why? The aromas had taken me back to my Grandma Mach’s kitchen on Thanksgiving Day—a place and time I associated with warmth and happiness.
Our sense of taste relies heavily on smell. That’s why food tastes differently when your nose is stuffed up. We taste only four flavors: sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. Says Ackerman, “Everything else we call flavor is really odor.” Some researchers go as far as to say that “wine is a tasteless liquid that is deeply fragrant.”
Ackerman writes,”Each person has an odor as individual as a fingerprint.” A dog can easily identify its owner even if he or she is an identical twin. A police dog can track the scent of a single criminal even though hundreds of other people might be around.
Here are a few more interesting (at least to me!) facts about our sense of smell:
+ Nationality influences fragrances. Germans like pine, Japanese like delicate scents, South Americans want stronger ones. In Venezuela, for example, floor-cleaning products contain ten times as much pine fragrance as those in the U.S. We humans are funny. In one way we want to live in sanitary quarters. But then we fill our homes with fragrances of pine, lemon, cinnamon, and flowers of all kinds.
+ Amnosia is the inability to smell. About 2 million Americans suffer from this condition. Individuals with amnosia are at risk in detecting fires, gas leaks, and spoiled food. Research has shown that Alzheimer patients often lose their sense of smell along with memory.
+ Companies make products that are “scent free.” But the products aren’t really. Manufacturers have to add some kind of neutral scent to mask the odors of the chemicals used in making the product!
+ There are individuals called “odor artists.” These people will design a particular scent for companies. The scent for the Sheraton Hotel chain, for example, is a combination of fig, clove, and jasmine.
+ Women consistently out-perform men on all tests of smelling ability.
+ One of the first gifts the child Jesus received was frankincense, a gift of fragrance. One of his last gifts was also the gift of fragrance. Shortly before Jesus died, an unnamed woman anointed his head with spikenard, a highly fragrant and very expensive oil. Jesus seemed to welcome the anointing, praising the woman for her loving and extravagant action toward him. (Mk. 14:3-9)
Some questions for reflection:
1. Do you have any favorite scents?
2. Has a particular scent ever evoked a memory or emotion for you?
3. What role do scents play in your everyday life? in your prayer life?
Here is a gentle song that fits with today’s theme. It’s called “The Fragrance Prayer” and was written and sung by Jacque Darragh. The words are a beautiful prayer by Blessed John Henry Newman. I hope you like it.
The Woman Caught in Adultery
The story of the woman caught in the act of adultery has many facets. Let’s look at a few of them to see what this story might be saying to us today.
The setting. Jesus is teaching a crowd in the Temple area when the scribes and Pharisees, part of the religious leadership, bring a woman before him whom they say was caught in the act of adultery. Notice, they bring the woman to him publicly—not privately. Clearly they want an audience. They also want to entrap him.
The woman. We don’t know who this woman was. But she was not merely suspected of adultery. She was caught in the act. Were the witnesses “planted” in the room where the act occurred? If so, what does that say about them? And where’s the man, her “partner in crime”? The fact that he is not dragged along with her could mean: a) this whole thing was a set up, b) there’s a double standard here, c) he was a faster runner. Imagine the woman’s shame in front of all those people. And her terror. Her life was hanging by a thread.
The dilemma: The punishment for adultery was death by stoning (Lev. 20:10). If Jesus says she should be stoned, he would be contradicting his message of mercy and forgiveness. But if he absolves her, he would be transgressing the 
precept of the law.
Jesus’ actions. What does Jesus do? First, he remains silent for a little while. Pope John Paul II said, “By his silence Jesus invites everyone to self-reflection.” That includes us! Then he stoops down and begins to write on the ground. We are not told what he wrote. There’s much speculation. Some say he merely doodled. Others that he wrote the word “hypocrite.” Still others say he was writing the Ten Commandments. Then he stands up and says those incredible words: “Let the one who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Another call for self-reflection! Jesus then bends down and writes again. Some speculate he was writing down the sins of the men who had dragged the woman to him.
Whatever Jesus wrote, he silenced the woman’s accusers. Slowly they begin to go away “one by one, beginning with the elders.” The scribes and Pharisees wanted Jesus to focus on the woman, the sinner. Jesus instead focuses on them, for they are also sinners! The accusers wanted Jesus to focus on adultery. Instead he highlights other more insidious and deadly sins: judgmentalism, self-righteousness, prejudice, deviousness, pride, gossip, conniving, callousness. The accusers have equated the woman with her sin. But Jesus distinguishes between the sinner and the sin. He knows everyone is more than the wrong they do. (Would we want to be remembered only for the worst thing we ever did?!)
After all the scribes and Pharisees leave, Jesus stands up again and restores the woman’s dignity by looking her in the eyes and addressing her: “Woman, where are they?” (I see humor in that question!) Then, “Has no one condemned you?” She says, “No one, sir.” By addressing him as sir, she reveals her respect for him. After all, he just saved her life! Then Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on don’t sin anymore.” Jesus sets her free. And he challenges her. He gives her a future. As Oscar Wilde remarked, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Additional comments:
+ Many of us (myself included) are prone to judge others. We see in the news or hear rumors of the awful things people do, and it’s easy to judge “them” rather than examining our own hearts. Sometimes we even delight in seeing people fail/fall/get caught (like Tiger Woods perhaps or some young starlet?) What does that say about us? We must remember: we tend to judge others by appearances, and appearances can be deceiving.
+ When I taught high school for all those years, sometimes students would do “bad” things. The temptation for me was to accuse them in anger, “You did a terrible thing!” But I soon learned, it was more effective, more honest, and more non-judgmental, to simply ask them, “What happened?” In other words, tell me your story because I have only partial data—what I saw you do or what others say you did. I have to hear your story.
+ This story from the gospel is absent from the oldest Greek manuscripts. St. Augustine (who knew a lot about sin and forgiveness!) conjectured that some copyists omitted it because they felt it made Jesus look too lenient! Do we ever think Jesus is too lenient with sinners? If so, what does that say about us?
I’d like to conclude with a song entitled “How Can It Be?” by Lauren Daigle, a 23-year-old with a voice described as “smoky and sweet.” I can imagine the woman caught in adultery singing this song, overwhelmed by Jesus’ goodness and mercy. May the words of this song become our own as we recall Jesus’ great love and mercy toward us too!
What speaks to you today from this gospel story?
Do any of the words of this song or do any of these paintings touch your heart today?
A Reflection on Shoes
The other day as I was putting on my sneakers, I thought: I wonder who came up with the idea of shoes? So I decided to do a little research. (more…)
