"12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the money bag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
9 When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, 11 because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus."
John 12:1-11
The RSV translates Matthew 26:10, which we take to be a parallel record, thus: 'She has done a beautiful thing to Me', and our Lord's language gives some indication of what He felt about what Mary did. How glad He must have been to have received at this point such homage and devotion, and to realise that Mary was at one with Him in spirit in what He was about to go through. In a very true and real sense it could be said that Mary had fellowship with Him in His coming sufferings, and was identified with Him in the cross He was about to bear. To share fellowship with Him in His sufferings, then, is one of the most beautiful things in the world, and it is from this that sweetness and grace flow out to men. When one thinks of the lives that have been a blessing to others, one finds that the virtue that blesses has come from the fellowship such lives have had in the sufferings of Christ. We know too, in our own experience, that it is when our lives most approximate to this that they become a blessing to those around us. It is the one, incontrovertible law of fruitfulness.