MARY, OUR MOTHER

SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY #417

Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said: "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" Now he said this not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief and, having the purse, carried the things that were put therein. Jesus therefore said: "Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial. For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always." (John 12:3-8)

COVETOUSNESS IS A CAPITAL SIN: Judas had an inordinate love of money, or, in other words, was covetous or avaricious. He did not resist this evil passion, and therefore fell by degrees into greater sins. He began by stealing, first small, and then greater sums from the money entrusted to his care. He then displayed the most shameful hypocrisy by making out that the interests of the poor were his only care, whereas his real object in blaming Mary's extravagance was to facilitate his thefts. In the hardness of his heart he robbed the poor of the alms due to them, and from treachery to them, proceeded to treachery towards his Lord and Master.

[From 'A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture' by Bishop Knecht, D.D.] 
(1899 Douay-Rheims Bible)