From the Gospel: Of perfumes and holy odours
The use of perfumes, symbolising eternal life and youthfulness, contrasts with the bad odours of decay and death
Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. Today’s readings: Mark 11:1-10; Psalm 22:8-24; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14: 1-15: 47.
The global perfume market value reached €42.07 million in 2022, and by 2030 it is projected to increase to €63.53 million.
A study by Rachel S. Herz published in Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward (2011), addresses the human biological factors related to fragrance as well as the sociological, psychological, and demographic aspects of scents and perfumes, addressing concerns related to gendering and sexual attraction. Unlike other mammals, humans lack a specific organ or neuronal tissue responsible for pheromones perception.
On the other hand, odour affects how attractive people are perceived and how intimate ties are formed. Perfume is perceived as hedonistic, sensual, psychological and manipulative; it links scent to emotional associations in a smeller, who rotates between gratifying others and satisfying themselves. Ultimately the use of perfumes enhances positive mood factors.
Originating in Mesopotamia, some 4,000 years ago, perfumes and aromas were originally connected to religious rituals honouring deities and their representatives on earth. There’s something divine in the use of perfumes, symbolising eternal life and youthfulness, contrasting the bad odours of decay and death. The Egyptian god of perfume, born as human, actually attained godhood through the use of fragrance extracted from water lilies.
Scents, perfumes, aromas and fragrances are important elements in biblical literature, and although it is claimed that Christianity discouraged the personal use of these in preference to a sombre and ascetic demeanour, Catholicism is to a certain extent an olfactory religion. Think of the use of incense, fragrant oils, flowers and balm in liturgies.
The apostle Paul compares the Good News as the spreading of the fragrance of Christ among the nations, and of followers of Christ as a fragrant offering pleasing to God. In Christian mysticism, one frequently encounters references to “odour of sanctity”, and hagiography tells of bodies of saints emitting delicate heavenly fragrances as proof of their spiritual and moral integrity.
Locally, Holy Week is an olfactory experience. Churches are scented through the concoction of ingredients used in the borma tas-sepulkru and other fragrances.
In today’s Gospel of the Passion narrative according to Mark, we are told that when Jesus “was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head”. There’s perhaps a direct reference to the sensual perfumes and fragrances of the Song of Songs in this account, which opens up the narrative of the Passion (intense emotion and suffering) of Jesus.
However, the evangelist’s intent is to discretely point out the true purpose and meaning of Jesus’s Passion: giving life in the context of death, there where the scene is set, in Bethany at Simon the leper’s house. Leprosy emits nauseating odours and produces olfactory dysfunction in the infected. Those present, however, lament the wasteful – and perhaps scandalous – nature of the woman’s affectionate gesture towards Jesus; Judas exits the scene to organise Jesus’s killing; Jesus announces his death and implies haste in burial due to Sabbath laws.
Scholars point out that perhaps Simon the Leper in Mark is the Johannine Lazarus, as the scene happens in Bethany. Whatever the identification, the context is one that points to the gift of life in a context marked by death. Also, in the act of breaking the jar and the pouring of strong perfume, Origen and early Christian writers saw an allegorical reference to Jesus who “emptied himself... to the point of death”. His outpouring of self spreads, so to speak, among “those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”. Jesus’s outpouring smells of authentic, altruistic love.
This Holy Week, as you perhaps pay visits to Catholic churches, be mindful of your olfactory sense, and let fragrances lead you to the odour of sanctity inviting you to outpour genuine love.