Christ the Educator

Chapter 8

146 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA glances and indecent conversations about such things must be renounced. Let the gaze be composed, and the movement of the head and the gestures be steady, as well as the motion of the hands in conversation. In general, the Christian is, by nature, a man of gentleness and quiet, of serenity and peace. Chapter 8 (61 ) The use of wreathes and of perfumes is not a necessity for us. Rather, it shipwrecks us upon pleasure and frivolity even as night draws near.1 I know that a woman brought perfume in an alabaster box and anointed the feet of the Lord with it at that holy supper,2 and that the Lord was pleased with it. I know too, that the ancient kings of the Jews used to wear precious gold and jewels.3 But that woman had not yet entered into communion with the Word (for she was still a sinner), and so she paid the Master honor with what she considered the most precious thing she had, her perfume, and then, wiping off the remainder of the perfume with the garland of her head, her hair, she poured out upon the Lord her tears of repentance. So her sins were forgiven her. This may be used as a symbol of the Lord's teachings and of His sufferings. The anointing of His feet with sweet-smelling myrrh suggests the divine teaching whose good odor and fame has spread to the ends of the earth: 'Their sound has gone forth to the ends of the earth.'4 And those anointed feet of 1 Cf. John 9.4; 1 Thess. 5.2. 2 Cf. Luke. 7.'!>7. '!> Cf. 2 Kings 12.'!>0; Eccli. 45.14. 4 Ps. 18.5; Rom. 10.18. CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 147 the Lord-not to be too subtle-are the Apostles, the sweet odor of the myrrh prefiguring their reception of the Holy Spirit. (62) I mean that the figure of the Lord's feet is to be understood of the Apostles who journeyed about the whole world preaching the Gospel. In another place, in a psalm, the Spirit speaks of those feet : 'We will adore in the place where His feet stood,'5 that is, where His Apostles, His feet, have already been, through whose preaching He has come to the ends of the earth. The tears are repentance and the unloosed hair means conversion from love of finery and suffering borne patiently for the Lord when they preached, unloosing the old vanity by the new faith. Considering this deed in another way, mystically, this figure also symbolizes the suffering of the Master. The oil is the Lord Himself, from whom we receive mercy;6 the myrrh, which is diluted oil, is the traitor Judas, because, when the Lord was departing from life in this world, He was anointed with myrrh, as the dead are anointed with it. The tears are sinners who have repented, who have come to believe in Him, whose sins have been forgiven. And the unloosed hair is desolate Jerusalem in mourning, over whom the lamentations of the Prophets were sung. The Lord Himself said that Judas would prove false: 'He who dips with Me in the dish, he it is who will betray Me.'7 Do you not recognize in him the disloyal table companion?8 This same Judas betrayed the Master with a kiss; he became a hypocrite, imitating with his teacherous kiss the hypocrite of old,9 5 Ps. 131.7. 6 In Greek, 'oil' (claiml) , akin to eieeo ('to have mercy'), is a symbol of mercy. 7 Matt. 26.23. 8 Cf. Eccli. 6.10. 9 Cf. 2 Kings 20.9. 148 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA and becoming an example of the people spoken of: 'This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.'IO (63) It is not far-fetched, then, to suppose that He intended the oil to mean the Apostle who received mercy, and the treated, diluted oil the deceitful betrayer. This it is that the anointing of the feet with perfume prefigured . By washing the feet of His disciples with His own hands as He sent them forth to noble deeds, the Saviour manifested in an excellent way their journeying to bestow graces upon the nations, and He purified that journeying in anticipation by His own power. The perfume left its odor...