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Regarding Hope for Sinners
Homily St. Joseph Parish, Detroit
Today’s readings bring us to a meditation on the forgiveness of God: God forgave King David for his sin with Bathsheba and for plotting the death of her husband Uriah,[1] then St. Paul in Galatians[2] teaches us about justification by faith in Christ who died and with whom Paul is daily crucified, and then there is the marvelous narration of the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and dried his feet with her hair.[3] Today’s reflection is a contemplation of this encounter with the Lord. In Israel, there were two children. One was a boy, the other was a girl. The boy had been brought up in the Law of Moses, and his name was Simon. He learned the Torah, and his teachers did not only drill him in the knowledge of the Law, but in its practice, and perhaps even helped him interiorize it, so that his observance of the Law of Moses was in his life what it meant to be: an act of worship of the one true God, the God of Israel. Now he had grown and become a member of the Pharisees, a faction or even sect whose name means, separated, that is, separated from the Gentiles and their alien ways. This sect had existed now for three hundred years or so. They prided themselves on a particularly on their observance of the faith of Israel, in doctrine and in practice; yet they were not violent like the Zealots. He was famous, wealthy, prestigious, exemplary. But he was also proud. The girl whom we mentioned went down a different road. And now, as an adult, the scriptures use one word, the word “sinful,” to describe her to us. Everyone knew she was a sinner. She was unclean, unwanted, despicable, vile. By day she mused over all the arguments of despair; by night, demons amused themselves with her in dark and degrading ways. The pains of her sins crushed her, and in secret she shed countless tears for her shame, and a shadow of hatred nurtured her revilement for life and for everything. She had drunk deeply from the wells of sin, and her soul only vomited it up as darkness and solitude. She was a daughter of Israel, but with no hope, no faith, no love, no light, no truth. But she was humble. Jesus by now had left Caparnaum and entered Naim; upon his entrance, he had found a funeral procession for the only son of a widow, and he raised him from the dead to the astonishment of all.[4] It seems that he was still in Naim when he met both the man and the woman whose lives were so different. They both had heard the rumors about him, some of the Gospel of eternal life which he came to preach – “repent, and believe the Gospel,”[5] he proclaimed – and in this city, they knew the young man whom he had risen from the dead, and they all wondered at him. So the Pharisee, surely a leader in this small town, set out to discern who this man might be, and wondered whether he was a prophet. And also the sinful woman wanted to know who he might be, for she wished to be freed from the tears and torment, the despair and slavery to sin, to which she was constantly subjected. And so both met Jesus, the same night, the same place. But not in the same way, and with very different results. Simon stuffed Jesus into the sieve of his tiny little intellect, and strained out only those things which he wanted to see. The sinful woman opened her heart to Jesus. But Simon’s heart was too cold, and his head had deafened his heart when he encountered the Lord. Simon reduced Jesus to judgment, but the sinful woman openly professed her faith in him, for everybody to see. Simon gave Jesus a bowl to wash his hands, as if he were unclean, but the sinful woman touched him, kissing his feet, sanctifying her own flesh with Jesus’ divine flesh, as we all do at Eucharistic communion. Simon gave him food and hospitality, but the sinful woman gave him the most precious thing she had in her home, a precious ointment. Simon looked at both Jesus and the sinful woman not as persons but as categories, “If he were a prophet… what kind of woman this is…”; yet the sinful woman looked at Jesus for who he was, and so she knew him. She did not stand up to Jesus and say, “It is not my fault that I am like this. Sociological studies have definitively concluded that I am simply a victim of injustice. Society has hangups about things like prostitution, and so I am not respected but looked down upon. It is not my fault, it is someone else’s fault.” No, she did not say that. She simply wept for her sins at the feet of Jesus. Simon did not repent for a single one of his sins at the feet of Jesus. Oh happy woman! She certainly wept at the right feet! For God alone can forgive sins, and these were not just any man’s feet, but the feet of the man who was the Son of God, the feet which took form by the Holy Spirit in the Virginal womb of Blessed Mary. I therefore encourage all of you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, to meet Jesus today, Jesus in the flesh as is the Holy Eucharist, not like Simon the Pharisee, but like the sinful woman. Use your heart more than your head when you deal with him. Don’t justify your sins, that does no good; just repent from them. Confess your sins humbly in the confessional, and, through the priest, you will hear Jesus’ same words, “Your sins are forgiven.” At communion time, let his flesh sanctify yours. Give him the best of yourselves, of your time, of your things, of your skills, and not just the leftovers. Believe in Jesus, in the message of Jesus, in the sacraments of Jesus, in the teachings and practices Jesus taught us, so that, when your earthly life is over, you too can hear Jesus say to you, “Your faith has saved you,”[6] enter now your eternal peace. |