On the way in Lent. The scent of love
Reflections by Luigi Testa* On the first Friday of Lent
As soon as the door has been crossed, even before the gaze gets used to leaving the light outside, you are invaded by a sweet and pungent perfume.
The first feeling you have, when you enter the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem, is this smell, strong, of oil that mixes nard and myrrh, poured every day on the stone of the set. "Aroma that spreads is your name" (Ct 1,3).
Entering the Lent, we should hear the same smell. Even before the other senses adapt, we should be invaded by this perfume that knows of love.
The love of the woman who pays the Nardo at his feet (Mk 14,3; Jn 12,3): "While the king is on his sofa, my Nardo breaks out his perfume" (Ct 1:12).
And his love of him - "his lips are lilies who steal fluid myrrh" (Ct 5:13) - until they remain body to be worshiped lifeless, so "thirty kilos of a mixture of myrrh and àloe are not enough" (Jn 19:39).
In the days that will come, this smell remains on us, to always tell us about this love, wasted, broken.
* Luigi Testa is the author of legal texts and writes for some national newspapers. “Via crucis of a gay boy” (Castelvecchi, 2024) is his first book of a spiritual nature, other of his reflections are also published onGionata.org.
