LENT 2024: DAY 9 - Friday February 23

 

“A woman’s intuition dimly guessed at more than the Apostles understood, even though to them in explicit language He foretold His Passion and death. The woman was Mary, who had been a sinner. The time was six days before Good Friday; the place was Simon’s house – the Simon who had been a leper.

 

As the meal drew to a close, Mary passed to the back of the Savior’s couch, carrying a vase of pure spikenard ointment. This ointment was costly; Judas who put a price on everything, valued it at about a year’s wages. The ointment was costly for Mary, but not too costly for the Son of God.

 

The vessel in which this extract of myrrh was carried was likely of alabaster, with a long thin neck. Mary broke the vessel to permit an unmeasured flowing up His head and His feet. In a few days, at the Last Supper, He would break bread as a token of His Body which would be broken on the Cross. From Mary’s “broken and contrite spirit”, which God never despise, came this other broken thing in dim prefigurement of His death. At His birth, the Wise Men brought myrrh for His death and burial; now, at the close of His earthly life, Mary brought the myrrh again for his death… Even His name “Christ” meant “the Anointed of God”. “Let her alone!” (John 12:7) “She has anointed My Body beforehand to prepare it for burial.” (Mark 14:8)

 

She was making an offering to Him as the Victim for the sins of the world. The effusion of ointment was an anticipation of the embalming of His Body. It might have been unconscious in Mary’s mind, as it was unconscious in the minds of the Magi who also anticipated His death, but He made the unconscious conscious. Six days before His death, she anointed Him for His burial.”

 

 

(Chapter 32, pgs.550-551, 553)

+ QUOTES FOR LIFE