Oil – a sacred sign of sacred healing taking place within. Physical, emotional, spiritual. Oil makes the world go round; it helps the world to spin ever that much more smoothly on its axis.

Who’s the greatest? We often have that conversation, too, with ourselves and with each other. I make the best grades in my class. I have the best job. I make the most money. I have more children than you, and they are in more activities than yours. And we see it with the global refugee crisis: Who’s okay to let into our country whether in Europe or the United States or elsewhere? To whom will we grant asylum?

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

How often do we – in our lives and in our faith communities — stiffen, holding onto our traditions as the way to follow, instead of bending, yielding, allowing God to move us into God’s way, a new way?

Michelangelo’s masterpiece “La Pietà,” housed in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, portrays a young Mary holding Jesus’ broken body on her lap after the crucifixion. A statue rendered in highly polished, smooth, whitest-of-white marble, glistening in the air.