It was two days before  the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and the Chief Priests and the Scholars were seeking how, having arrested him,  they might kill him, with deceit.  For they said ‘Not during the Feast, otherwise there will be a riot among the people.’ 

And he was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the Leper, reclining at the table, when a woman came, having an alabaster jar of nard perfume – pure and expensive. Having broken the jar, she poured it on his head. 

Some were angry with her: ‘Why did this waste of perfume happen? For this perfume was able to be to be sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor?’ And they scolded her.

But Jesus said: ‘Leave her. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good deed for me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them. Me you do not always have. What she was able to do, she did. She anointed my body for burial beforehand. Truly I say to you, wherever the good news is announced in the whole world, what she has done will be spoken in memory of her. 

And Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went out to the Chief Priests to hand him over to them. Those who heard were glad and promised to give him silver. And he sought how to hand him over at the right time. 

Teach us, good Lord,
to serve thee as thou deservest;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

St Ignatius