since we know that Jesus especially called on the rich to alter the tenor of their ways, and always for the benefit of the poor.  But, they answered:  The rich will not alter the tenor of their ways, they will consume the gentle disciples of Jesus, as the wolf the sheep.  Many were impressed by that view, and lost courage:  The Prophet means well, they reflected, but nothing is to be gained by adopting His methods.

Then it became known that Jesus had allowed Himself to be anointed.  To allow Himself to be anointed meant that He regarded Himself as the Heaven-sent Messiah!  And that was hostile to the existing order of things, to the king.  So said the preachers in the synagogues, the houses, and the streets, but they were silent over the fact that the anointing was the work of a poor woman who desired to heal His sore feet.  In fact, the preachers cared nothing for the people or the king but only for the letter of the law.

When the woman who had anointed His feet saw that He was despised because of her, she went silently apart by herself.  No human being cared so much for Him, and none left Him so calmly.  She did not go back to the old man she had married out of pity, and forgotten—­out of love, but she went to relations at Bethany.  Since the Prophet had raised her up before all the people, her relatives no longer closed their doors to her, but received her kindly.

Jesus was aware how His native ground tottered under His feet, how the people began to shun Him more and more, how the inns made difficulties about receiving Him.  So He went, with those who were true to Him, out into the rocky desert of Judaea.  He gained new adherents on the way, and people came from the surrounding places with pack and staff to hear the wonderful preacher.  Some had had enough of the barren wisdom of the Pharisees, others were disgusted with the bad administration of the country, and with the fine promises of the Romans, they were ruined by the agricultural depression, or in despair over the low level of men’s minds, over the barbarism of men.  There were some, too, who had fled before the robber bands of Barabbas which infested the desert to their undoing.  They came into His presence, hungering for the living word on which to feed their starving souls.  John said to them:  “His teaching is nourishment.  His word is flesh.  Who eats of His flesh and drinks of His blood will not die.”

They wondered at those words.  How were they to understand what was meant by eating His flesh and drinking His blood?

Then John; “The word is like flesh, it nourishes the soul.  Manna was sent from Heaven for our ancestors, yet they died.  His word is bread from heaven which makes us immortal.”  They remembered another saying:  “His flesh is food indeed!” And they explained that a man’s body is destined to be consumed by the spirit, like tallow and wick by flame.  So man, in order to become divine, must attain the divine life through the medium of humanity.