The Ministry of Anointing: Care, Touch, and Sacred Tenderness

Before his death, Jesus is anointed by a woman with costly perfume. Some object immediately — it is inefficient, impractical, and wasteful. But Jesus defends her: “She has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mark 14:6).

Her act is pastoral care.

She recognizes suffering approaching and responds not with strategy but tenderness. She offers preparation, comfort, and dignity. The moment reveals that care itself is ministry, not a distraction from ministry.

She recognizes suffering approaching and responds not with strategy but tenderness. She offers preparation, comfort, and dignity. The moment reveals that care itself is ministry, not a distraction from ministry.

Congregations often prioritize programs, planning, and production. Yet spiritual formation frequently happens through quiet acts: sitting with the grieving, praying at bedsides, cooking meals, listening without fixing.

Lent restores the church to embodied compassion. Pastoral leadership includes preaching and organizing, but it also includes anointing — attending to the soul and body of people carrying invisible burdens.

The woman does not stop the cross, but she strengthens Jesus to endure it.

Ministry is not always measured in outcomes. Sometimes it is measured in whether people felt seen, comforted, and accompanied in their hardest moments. The Gospel preserves her story as a reminder that tenderness is not peripheral to leadership — it is central to it.