Intimate Moment with Mary

It seems a little odd to me that Gire calls this chapter "An Intimate Moment with Mary" but he focuses on everyone except her. He's right to do that in one sense... who can know what their relationship was really like? The DaVinci Code (I know... dirty words these days) suggests Jesus had a wife, Mary Magdalene, but that is only one of the theories about which Mary might have been Jesus' wife. A Rabbi was usually required to be married. It was part of the customary of the times. (Still is, pretty much.)

But whether Jesus was married to Mary of Bethany or not married at all, it's obvious from Scripture that they shared a closeness not mentioned about any other woman he was known to keep company with. She sat at his feet while her sister worked her tail off... I doubt she'd have done that on her own. She immediately raced from the house to see Jesus when her brother was dead, and it was after this encounter that Jesus wept. Jesus and Mary were perhaps "soulmates" in the modern sense of the word, and as such she would have sensed his anxiety and tension over the events to come.

So to hell with convention... this was her chance to pay a tangible tribute to the Lord she loved. A jar of oxnard, expensive stuff, had to kept sealed or it would dry out. Once the seal was broken, the entire amount would have to be used up immediately. It was apparently used to prepare the dead; maybe it was left over from when Lazarus had died, an extra jar not used when he was buried. She used it on Jesus. To everyone else it was a huge waste, to Jesus it was a display of love. And this was one time he didn't let it pass. "She will be remembered for this..."