ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF YEAR "C"

Sunday 11^th. Year “C”

The Sinful Woman

  We see from the Gospel the type of fellowship that Jesus was seeking. He knew who were those who needed him: tax collectors and sinners. They belonged to a world apart, a condemned world. And they took it as accepted fact that they were sinners.  So it was quite a shock to the official Jewish religion to see Jesus in the midst of sinners, sharing their meals and conversation. His choice was clear: he preferred to belong to the rejected class.  It landed him into trouble. His own generation had to choose what to do with him, since he threatened their traditional religion. He threatened their holy place (Jerusalem and the temple), the holy time (Passover and the Sabbath); h e threatened their holy men (scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees). So they promptly got rid of him and they thought they were doing an act of religion. As he was considered unholy, he was taken outside the city and given an unholy place to die in (Golgotha), hung between unholy men (thieves) and left to his grisly end. It was religious man’s rejected of Christ as the truth about God and man.

From what we know about him, Jesus liked sinners, he liked to eat with them and converse with them. During meals, he certainly was talking with them, exchanging pleasantries, making comments on the happenings of daily life, accidents and encounters. Jesus did not need to sound warnings and threats during meals. Nobody does that, unless he is very pessimistic, which Jesus wasn’t. He saw something good in everybody. No human being is totally and absolutely evil. “Nazareth? What good can come out of Nazareth?” said a prospective disciple. We answer: from Nazareth there came the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Jesus of Nazareth himself. What some people thought unholy God would make holy. It was the unholy place, known as Golgotha, that God claimed for his own. A new idea of holiness was born. We don’t count holy what God seems to; we don’t see the way that God sees. We say, let the world come to us. God replies, go into the world and meet the real Man.

My dear friends, during meals and conversations, don’t hesitate to correct your relatives and friends when you notice they are condemning people as just no good, with nothing good to be expected of them. You should react to such destructive remarks by saying, “You’re being pessimistic. You must have hopes for everybody; hopes for the future, including yours.”

Let us focus again on Jesus. Jesus came across as an understanding and affable friend. You could always feel comfortable in his presence. Today’s beautiful line is from the lips of Jesus. Pointing to the woman anointing and kissing his feet, he declares publicly: “She loves much because she has been forgiven much.” Try to imagine the scene. Jesus is seated at table with Simon, the tax collector, and his guests. They face the open entrance of the house so that they could see all that is going on in the compound outside. And then the woman crosses the entrance knowing that Jesus is seated inside. She looks for him from outside and he looks at her from where he is seated. Their eyes meet. She sees mercy and forgiveness. She then knows she is forgiven, and this fills her with love. “She loves much loves for she is forgiven much.” That is the gist of today’s gospel’s passage.

 To understand today’s gospel, we must discern behind it the very person of the man-God, ideal of encounter between God and man. In Jesus God and man meet. Christ has made a success of this encounter. Hence he can take the most desperate human situation and make wrongdoers aware of what they are expected to do. They must open to God’s gift (or his pardon) and respond with a loving “yes” to his initiative. The power of evil is still so strong in today’s world that we cannot be certain of man’s future. But what we are certain of is that Jesus Christ is always present and calling us to greater perfection, to become more human and considerate towards one another.

Let me end with a beautiful Prayer of Padraig Pearse:

I have made my heart clean tonight

As a woman might clean her house                                                  

‘Ere her lover come to visit her                                                              

O Lover, pass not by.

I have opened the door of my heart                                                

Like a man what would make a feast                                                    

For his son’s coming home from afar.

Beautiful, thy coming, O Son.

Amen

St. Thomas’ Church

Kolkata

Sunday, 16 June 2013