Receive the Lord’s Favor
Spikenard is a plant native to Asia and from which the ancients manufactured a rather aromatic ointment. Regarded as somewhat expensive by the standards of the day, it was with an alabaster box of this that a woman anointed the head of Jesus at the Fourteenth of Mark’s Gospel. Some considered such a use of costly ointment to have been a waste, claiming that the sale of it could have facilitated the care of the poor. The Savior, however, defended the woman with the reminder that her critics had every opportunity to care for the poor, adding that she had wrought a good work. Because she had done what she could do, her deed would be memorialized in the Gospel message. It is those that do what they can of good deeds, not those that criticize the doing of them, who receive the Lord’s favor.
Written by David Hayes Prophater