Oil, throughout Scripture, is a sign of God’s presence, a symbol of the Spirit of God. Oil glistens, picks up the warmth of sunlight, softens the skin, perfumes the person. (Gerard Manley Hopkins, extolling God’s grandeur in creation, uses a similar image in his line “It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed.”)3 There is a quality of warmth and ease in God’s community which contrasts with the icy coldness and hard surfaces of people who jostle each other in mobs and crowds.
