Now the feast of the pasch and of the Azymes was after two days: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might by some wile lay hold on him and kill him.

²But they said: Not on the festival day, lest there should be a tumult among the people.

³And when he was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, and was at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of precious spikenard. And breaking the alabaster box, she poured it out upon his head.

⁴Now there were some that had indignation within themselves and said: Why was this waste of the ointment made?

⁵For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred pence and given to the poor. And they murmured against her.

⁶But Jesus said: Let her alone. Why do You molest her? She hath wrought a good work upon me.

⁷For the poor you have always with you: and whensoever you will, you may do them good: but me you have not always.

⁸She hath done what she could: she is come beforehand to anoint my body for the burial.

⁹Amen, I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done shall be told for a memorial of her.

¹⁰And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests, to betray him to them.

¹¹Who hearing it were glad: and they promised him they would give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.

¹²Now on the first day of the unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the pasch, the disciples say to him: Whither wilt thou that we go and prepare for thee to eat the pasch?

¹³And he sendeth two of his disciples and saith to them: Go ye into the city; and there shall meet you a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him.

¹⁴And whithersoever he shall go in, say to the master of the house, The master saith, Where is my refectory, where I may eat the pasch with my disciples?

¹⁵And he will shew you a large dining room furnished. And there prepare ye for us.

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