6 Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. 8 And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? 9 For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12 In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. 13 Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”
In contrast to 1-5, these verses show a very different attitude - the worship and devotion of a disciple, an act of adoration. This was the woman's attitude of spirit as the Passover approached. It is in relation to both the Passover and the plot to kill Jesus that the anointing must be considered, i.e. in association with His approaching death. This is so, not only from the point of view of our Lord's consciousness that He was to die, but also from the point of view that Mary also was conscious, and that she discerned the meaning and purpose of that death. The anointing was certainly a spontaneous, even impulsive, gesture on Mary's part, the expression of the love and adoration of her heart for Jesus. But it was love for Him not merely as a Teacher and a Friend, but as one about to become, by His death, a Saviour. We can hardly escape the implication of the context here, and our Lord's own words about her act, that it had to do with the death He was going to die. If this is so, we are obliged to believe that Mary, more than any of the disciples, indeed alone of all the disciples, had an intuitive appreciation and discernment of Christ's death and what it meant. They say love is blind, but in the spiritual realm it brings discernment; it is the key, in fact, to everything of final importance in the Christian life. If we really want to learn in the things of God, and to penetrate the mysteries of the Faith, we must allow our hearts to go out in love to Christ. Long ago, Thomas Boston once said, 'The best commentary on Holy Scripture is a heavenly state of mind', and this may be amplified to mean the state of a mind which is towards Christ in love and devotion.