The Perfume Scent That Speaks A Thousand Words

T

he identity of the woman who washed Jesus' feet is a topic of much discussion and varies depending on which Gospel account you refer to. All four Gospels include a story of a woman anointing Jesus, but the details differ in terms of the woman’s identity, the location, and the significance of the event. Here’s a breakdown of the key gospel passages. In the Gospel of John, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume and wipes them with her hair. This occurs in the house of Lazarus, shortly before Jesus' crucifixion. In the three gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke the woman who anoints Jesus’ head with expensive perfume at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany is not named.

But I would like to draw more attention to what three of the gospel accounts have in common. In Matthew, Mark, and John’s Gospels, this anointing happens just before Jesus' Passion. This is a prefiguration of the outpouring not of perfume but of God's blood. After having said those points, let us move to a contemplation aided by our imagination.

There was an unnamed woman who gatecrashed during one dinner in the house of Simon the leper in Bethany. It is reported that Simon is also a Pharisee.

The unnamed woman who gatecrashed caught both Jesus’s affection and great admiration because of her costly giving. Apart from Jesus, other men witnessed what she did but mocked her. This woman poured costly perfumed oil to anoint Jesus’s head to the indignation of Simon and company. Imagine what it must have been like. Imagine if you were there. There is one element that is worth our deep contemplation too. The perfume is present in all gospel accounts. The inner reality of love is like overflowing perfume’s scent and holocaust saturating the hearts of men and of God. It was Jesus who recognized such inner reality of love because he is love. To some, it was infuriating, a waste because they do not have the love like the love of Jesus. Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (cf. Mt 26:13; Mk 14:9).

For my third and last point, let us contemplate now Jesus. Did you know that one of the last teachings of Jesus to his disciples before his passion and death was the washing of the feet in John’s gospel? I would like to believe that Jesus continued to reflect and contemplate what the unnamed woman did even after that day. Like John the Baptist, the woman prepared the way for the last act of Jesus that he wanted his disciples to remember. The woman with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil became a mirror for Jesus. Jesus saw himself through this woman who bathed his feet with her tears and revered them with her endless kisses. “For this reason, I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but the one who is forgiven little, loves little” (Lk 7:47). Jesus did a similar gesture of washing the feet of his beloved disciples not out of being forgiven. He knew that his disciples would desert and betray him. But the lavish giving on the part of the woman who was forgiven made Jesus realize for himself who he is as unending love, agape. Just like the woman who poured lavishly and overflowingly, Jesus, as unending love, sees and contemplates how he would lavishly pour out all the love unceasingly even to those who would deny or betray him. Benedict XVI says “It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice” (Deus Caritas Est 10). When Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, he was doing what the woman preached regarding love, through her tears and kisses, to those men in Bethany. After Jesus had washed their feet, he said, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (cf. Jn 13:14-15). For “love ought to manifest itself more in deeds than in words.” But let us not forget that, first, there has to be love. Simply put “they do not love who do not show their love” (Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona). Fr JM Manzano SJ