Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil and anointed the feet of Jesus; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. All the gospels report the incident of the anointing of Jesus but each with a slightly different emphasis. In St. John’s telling the woman is not a “sinner” but instead one of Jesus’ closest friends, Mary of Bethany. What is striking is the almoste wasteful nature of the gesture — “three hundred days wages” worth of oil! This perhaps should serve as a warning to the church not to be too calculating. Instead of thinking about putting resources and manpower where there is “bigger bang for the buck,” can we “waste” ourselves on the periphery, with the marginated, as Pope Francis advises?
