Verily I say unto you, Wherever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, which this woman has done, be told for a memorial of her.
All Commentaries on Matthew 26:13 Go To Matthew 26
Jerome
AD 420
Not that he was a leper yet, but having been so, and having been healed by the Saviour, be retained the appellation to show forth the power of Him who healed him.
Another Evangelist instead of ‘alabastruin’ has ‘nardum pisticam,’ that is, genuine, unadulterated.
For let no one think that she who anointed His head and she who anointed His feet were one and the same; for the latter washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and is plainly said to have been a harlot. But of this woman nothing of this kind is recorded, and indeed a harlot could not have at once been made deserving of the Lord’s head.
I know that some raise a cavil here, because John says that Judas alone was grieved because he had the bag, and was a thief from the beginning; but Matthew, that all the disciples were sorrowful. These know not the figuresyllepsis, by which one name is put for many, and many for one; as Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “They were sawn asunder,” when it is thought that one only, Esaias namely, was so.
Here a question arises how the Lord should have said elsewhere to His disciples, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world;” but here, “Me ye shall not have always. "I suppose that in this place He speaks of His bodily presence, which shall not be with them after the resurrection in daily intercourse and friendship, as it is now.
Note His knowledge of things to come, how though about to suffer death within two days, He knows that His Gospel will be preached throughout the whole world.
Mystically; The Lord, about to suffer for the whole world, sojourns in Bethany, in the house of obedience, which once was that of Simon the leper. Simon also is interpreted ‘obedient,’ or, according to another interpretation, ‘the world, 'in whose house the Church is healed. For example, one does a kindness to a manout of feelings of natural righteousness, not for God’s sake, as the Gentiles sometime did; such a work is common oil of no fine savour, yet is it acceptable to God, forasmuch, as Peter says in Clement, the good works that the unbelievers do, profit them in this world, but avail not to gain them eternal life in another. They who do the same for God’s sake, profit thereby not in this world only but in the next also, and that they do is ointment of goodsavour.Another sort is that done for the good ofmen, as alms, and the like. He who does this to Christians, anoints the Lord's feet, for they are the Lord’s feet; and this penitents are most found to do for remission of their sins. He who devotes himself to chastity, and continues infastings and prayers, and other things which conduce to God’s glory only, thisis the ointment which anoints the Lord’s head, and with whose odour the whole Church is filled; this is the work meet not for penitents, but for the perfect, or the doctrine which is necessary for men; but the acknowledgment of the faith which belongs to God alone, is the ointment with which the head of Christ is anointed, with which we “are buried together with Christ by baptism into death.”
