Today, as we celebrate Palm Sunday, we enter into the most holy time of the Church’s year. And today we hear the account from Saint John’s Gospel of how Jesus was anointed by Saint Mary of Bethany.
Yesterday, on Lazarus Saturday, we commemorated how Jesus Christ had raised Lazarus from the dead, thus providing us with a foretaste of His own resurrection. Today’s Gospel places us in Bethany again, where Christ had gone to visit Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we are told that Mary brought in a jar of very costly ointment, pouring it on Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair, to the irritation of Judas Iscariot who saw this as a waste of money.
The Church gives us this reading as we enter Holy Week because, as Christ Himself says, Mary is anointing Him for burial. Her action is a prophetic gesture, showing who He really is and prophesying the death that He is about to undergo.
But this is also an action that reveals the tender devotion that Jesus Christ evokes in His followers. In anointing His feet with precious ointment, Mary was giving to Christ the most costly thing she had. She was, in effect, pouring out her whole life before Him. As we enter Holy Week, this Gospel challenges us to bring our whole lives to Christ, and to allow His suffering and death to touch us in the depths of our hearts so that we too will be able to respond to Him with our whole lives.