Grace First, Then Love

Homily for Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading and praying with the Scriptures can trip us up and expose our inner prejudices. Today's passage from the Gospel of St. Luke provides us with such an example. The story we hear today is about the "sinful woman" who bathes Jesus' feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and then anoints them with perfumed oil. In the course of the evangelist's description of the episode, the Pharisees doubt that Jesus is a prophet since he doesn't seem to know what sort of woman she is. By this time, most readers have come to the conclusion that the woman must be a prostitute, yet all the text tells us is that she is a sinful woman.

Exactly two weeks ago, we read another episode in which Jesus called his disciples after they had caught a boat load and then some of fish. Peter prostrates himself before Jesus and asks him to leave because he is a sinful man. The same words are used in the text to describe both Peter and the woman. They are sinners. Yet how many of us came away from the episode of the call of Peter thinking that he was the counterpart of the woman who bathed the feet of Jesus? We cannot claim that the text is what leads us to this conclusion since the text identifies both characters in the same language. If you have labeled the woman as a prostitute, and many have done so, it is because of our own prejudices when it comes to gender as it relates to sin.

In the first reading for today’s liturgy, St. Paul writes: “I am the least of the Apostles, not fit to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.” A little later in his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul refers to himself as “the chief of sinners.” We don’t have to make any judgments about St. Paul’s sin because he accuses himself of persecuting the church.

In all three of these characters, we come to realize that God’s forgiveness comes first. They don’t show their love for Jesus or for God and then receive the gift of God’s mercy. In each instance, God’s mercy has come first and has prompted the actions of the sinner. St. Paul tells us directly that this is the case as he writes: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”

Praying with the Scriptures not only might reveal our prejudices, it also can help us to realize the effectiveness of God’s grace in our own lives. How many times have we been forgiven? How many times has the grace of God moved us to respond in love? The Good News of these stories is that God’s love and God’s grace has changed us as it has the woman in today’s Gospel, St. Peter, and St. Paul.