Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C Homily 6/16/13
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C Gospel & Readings
The Readings:
first Reading
2 Samuel 12:7-10,13
God's judgment on David for taking another man's wife
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 32, 1-2,5,7,11
A prayer for forgiveness.
Second Reading
Galatians 2:16,19-21
We are justified through faith in Jesus Christ.
Gospel Reading
Luke 7:36—8:3
A sinful woman anoints Jesus' feet.
Today in our Readings, Responsorial Psalm and Gospel we have a recurring theme of sin and Judgment under the law being overcome by God’s forgiveness and Love, and the relationship between being delivered from guilt and sin and the gratitude and Love we feel when we ask for and receive forgiveness through the Grace of God and our faith in Jesus Christ.
In the first reading, the prophet Nathan confronts David with his sin of Adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent killing of her husband Uriah, by David deliberately sending him into a battle in which he knew Uriah would be killed. When David hears this, he accepts Nathan’s rebuke and acknowledges, “I have sinned against the Lord.” to which Nathan replies, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” David had willfully committed grave offenses, Yet when he repented of his actions, God was quick to forgive.
Our Psalm today is a penitential psalm, which begins with a blessing on those who have had their sins forgiven. Like David, the sinner has made a public confession of guilt, which leads to the experience of forgiveness which brings a deeper appreciation of the mercy and Love of God.
Our second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians, reminds us of an idea deeply rooted in the minds of many Christians both in his day and ours, that it is our following of prescribed laws and good deeds that buy for us the right to enter heaven. Paul’s argument for grace and faith over and above the law was an expansion of his criticism of Peter at Antioch
2:11-21 Paul accused Peter of succumbing to the pressure of the Judaizers or Pharisees turned Christians, whose insistence upon following Jewish Laws and customs as a necessary factor in the process of salvation, was in error as it negated the justifying power of faith in Jesus Christ. He says, “I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”
This theme is carried forward in our Gospel today. We have the well known story of the “woman with the Alabaster Jar”. Pope Gregory's homily on Luke's gospel in the 6th Century, made it an official interpretation of the church that Mary Magdalene was the woman of the “alabaster jar”—a prostitute: This was a conflation of the two personages, and a mistake, but in common tradition many have and still do accept this as true. In the story the woman is not identified, but her actions towards Jesus and his attitude towards her, are juxtaposed with the Pharisee and his attitude toward Jesus and the woman. Before we dicuss this further, I would like to give you a bit of historical background on this setting, for those of you not familiar with social customs of the Ancient Near eastern World in the time of Jesus Christ.
In that time, dining rooms, especially those of the rich and famous, were left open to the public. Uninvited guests and curious onlookers could pass in and out of the room at will. Those who wished could take a seat near the wall and listen to the conversations between the host and his invited guests. You should also know that they did not “sit at table” to eat. The customary way of Jews in taking their meals was to remove their sandals and recline on a couch facing each other in kind of circle, with their feet on the outside. This is how the uninvited woman was able to approach Jesus, wash his feet with her tears, kiss them and then anoint them. She could not have done this under a table. Having gained entry to Simon’s house in this way, the woman overstepped the bonds of social acceptability by approaching Jesus. That Jesus permitted her extravagant show of love without condition prompted Simon to criticize, albeit silently, the authenticity of Jesus as a prophet. As a prophet, Simon thought, Jesus would have known that this woman was unclean, and in violation of both Jewish customs and social laws and forbidden her to touch him.
But Jesus is better than a prophet, and can read even Simon’s unspoken thoughts. Simon, feeling justified and righteous because of his adherence to Jewish Laws and customs, behaved towards Jesus in a way that was both inhospitable and un-loving. Feeling himself Justified in his behavior he was very judgmental towards both Jesus and the Woman who approached him.
By means of Jesus’ questions to Simon, and the parable of the two debtors, Jesus leads Simon to understand at least logically and intellectually, the woman’s’ actions and Jesus’ attitude towards her. The woman who was outside the law had been given what Simon, for all his scrupulous adherence to the law, had not been able to achieve; forgiveness and the joy of being justified or being right with God. His small, hidden sins were the same to God as her flamboyant, high profile infractions. Both were sinners and in need of forgiveness, but it was the Woman, in this case the greater sinner in the eyes of the law, who received the greater satisfaction of forgiveness through her wholehearted acceptance and gratitude for Christ’s love and mercy.
There is a mention after this account of the women who accompanied Jesus as he traveled from one town and village to another with the twelve disciples, Three are mentioned, including Mary Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, but the passage also mentions Joanna, and Susanna, and that there were many others, and that some of these women even provided monetarily for their support.
Jesus’s attitude towards women was considered very revolutionary for the time. He mixed freely with them and allowed them to express publicly their deep love for him, as in the Gospel today. He even welcomed them among his disciples. Women accompanied him throughout his life, all the way to his crucifixion, and in all four Gospels they are the first witnesses to the Resurrection. They are the ones charged to bring the “good news” to the male disciples. Through Jesus, God reveals that women have an equal place in what society had traditionally only allowed to men.
In the final verses of the gospel
8:1-3, Luke has reemphasized Jesus’ special disposition towards for the disadvantaged and outcast members of society. He repeatedly went against laws that excluded these people, and welcomed to salvation with love and forgiveness all who would repent and believe. In various ways we have all shown disregard and ungratefulness for the gifts God has given us, and we all stand in need of God’s forgiveness and love in spite of our digressions. And is is for this reason we are also called to love and forgive all those who have wronged us. How can we allow ourselves to accept God’s forgiveness, if we cannot forgive each other?
In today’s reading, St. Paul says, “For through the law, I died to the Law, that I might Live for God, I have been crucified with Christ; Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ Lives in Me" What does it mean to have died to the Law? How does Christ Live in me? On this important subject, I offer you a quote from a wise and learned Priest and Jesuit Scholar, Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer
“The perfection of the Christian life is expressed here, since it is not merely an existence dominated by a new psychological motivation. Faith in Christ doesn’t substitute a new norm or goal of action. Rather, it reshapes man anew internally, supplying his with a new principle of activity on the ontological level of his very being. “ Fitzmeyer goes on to explain that faith in Christ and in the act of Christ living in the Christian result in a symbiosis of the “vivifying spirit” and that this is the vital principal of true Christian behavior.
The Ten Commandments - the Law of Moses have, over the past two millennia become a long list of Mortal and Venial Sins that now number nearly 20 x that of the original 10 Commandments in the Roman Catholic Church of today. When I read these of Laws of behavior and conduct that are intended to govern the lives of the faithful, I must conclude that the Judaisers with their Pharisee approach to the Law that St. Paul warned us about did indeed take over the church, and still control it. They overruled the influence of St. Paul and others who believed in the “vivifying spirit” of Jesus Christ as the supreme guide of our conscience and behavior. Perhaps they were afraid that the Commandment of Love and forgiveness that Jesus preached and taught by example would be too liberating to followers for the survival of the church.
I hope and pray that those who do believe in the “vivifying spirit” of Jesus Christ, and his love and Divine Mercy towards all those who seek him, will become the guiding principle of the Church again, and those who cling to laws and customs that are killing the faith of many while upholding what they believe to be a just and righteous interpretation of the sixth commandment, even to the point of attempting to influence and change laws that protect the rights and freedom of all citizens, catholic or not, will be outnumbered, and exposed for being the un-loving and unforgiving pharisee-Christian hypocrites that they are.
The joy of being forgiven and forgiving others expands the heart’s capacity for greater love, this is the best way we can express our desire to be like Jesus, to act with “vivifying spirit” of Christ in us, guiding us, directing our lives in a way that rules and laws can never replace. Mindful of our own human failings, perhaps Catholic poet, Rainer Maria Rilke is right when he says, “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
Unaided it is - and would be the most difficult task, but in those rare and wonderful moments when the love of Christ fills our hearts, it is the most natural feeling we can have for one another, and share with one another. So let us love one another as Jesus Christ has loved us, by living our faith, and forgiving each other, and surrendering our whole selves; flaws, sins and all, to the love and Divine Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Posts
