(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
We have a heroine and we have an anti-hero. The heroine is Mary who anointed the feet of Jesus with expensive perfumed oil worth about a year’s salary. The other is named Judas, who had uses for a year’s salary.
To estimate how much that would be, take the gross amount from your tax form 1040. This would give you a minimum amount. The full amount is that sum plus all the deductions you managed to have. That would feed a lot of people for a month. It would also give you a hefty amount to spend on your vacation.
We shall always have the poor. This is because we always have the thief who will take what belongs to the poor. The poor will be poor because they lack the resources of the rich or because the thief takes away their resources. The poor will be poor not because they want to be, but because they cannot escape poverty.
St Francis of Assisi taught that the money that the rich have over and above their needs really belongs to the poor. Many of the poor lack the resources to qualify for a stimulus check. If they have serious issues of health, owe child support, are coming out of bankruptcy and have legal difficulties, they probably do not qualify for a stimulus check. If the purpose of the stimulus check is to stimulate the economy and not reward those who do not need it, then those who do not need the check ought to let somebody who can use it to stimulate the economy and let it rest in some bank. The poor often lack the means to get out of poverty. Making it harder to vote, making financial resources harder to come by, laws governing bail, and similar things keep the poor from having resources they need to break out of poverty.
The thief takes a vacation while the heroin spends her social security check on expensive ointment for a funeral. In these last six days before we celebrate the Passover from death to life, we have to consider who we are in the scenario. Are we the heroine/hero figure, or the thief, or the one receiving preparation for burial, the one giving his life thirty small coins, or a bystander looking on at a distance? What part are we playing?