Now after two days it was the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how, after arresting him by stealth, they could kill him. For they said, “Not at the feast, lest there be an uproar by the people.” And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining for a meal, a woman came holding an alabaster flask of very costly perfumed oil of genuine nard. After breaking the alabaster flask, she poured it out on his head. But some were expressing indignation to one another: “Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil? For this perfumed oil could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor!” And they began to scold her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you cause trouble for her? She has done a good deed to me. For the poor you always have with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want, but you do not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.