On Wednesday

It was on the Wednesday that they called him a wasteful person.

The place smelled like the perfume department of a big store. It was as if somebody had bumped an elbow against a bottle and sent it crashing to the floor, setting off the most expensive stink bomb on earth.

But it happened in a house, not a shop. And the woman who broke the bottle was no casual afternoon shopper. She was the poorest of the poor, giving away the only precious thing she had. And he sat still while she poured the liquid all over his head… as unnecessary as aftershave on a full crop of hair and a bearded chin.

And those who smelled it, and those who saw it, and those who remembered that he was against extravagance, called him a wasteful person. They forgot that he also was the poorest of the poor. And they who had much and who had given him nothing, objected to a pauper giving him everything.

Jealousy was in the air when a poor woman’s generosity became an embarrassment to their tight-fistedness…That was on the Wednesday, when they called him a wasteful person.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group