Love, an eternal gesture

The thought that touched my heart most  from today's gospel reading, John 12:1-11, centered on Mary's gesture of love. She anointed the Lord's feet with ointment, then dried them with her hair. How close she must have been to Jesus to be able to do that! And the act itself indicates that she intuited something of what he was about to face in the coming days. Love senses. Love reaches out.

I had the grace to attend a retreat led by Fr. Marco Rupnik, SJ, the artist of the mosaic pictured below. I will never forget how he spoke of love. He impressed on me so beautifully that every act of love, in Christ, is imbedded in the memory of God the Father for all eternity. All eternity! Not just big acts, but little acts too. 

Mary of Bethany's gesture of love is her "signature." How many gestures of love, small and large, can I offer in Christ today, in the coming week? We remember how Paul describes love in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So there are many ways that we can offer love to those around us, and become, more and more, builders of a civilization of love. Not just for now, but for all eternity.