REPAIRING BRIDGES

When we sin, against God, or our neighbours, we offend God. But is sinning, like inflicting a wound n our body and God tries to heal it? Does He feel sorry for having called His name in vain? Or is it simply because we have broken one of His commandments? Have we ever thought of the concept, of the idea, that when we offend God we will be in fact refusing His love, His mercy, His trust, consequently we will be breaking the ‘bridge’, the ‘hot line’ that links us to God. IT IS THE INABILITY TO RESPOND TO THE FATHER’S LOVE.

When sinning I will be telling God: “I know my way, I don’t need Your help, I can do it on my own, I know you are my Father, but from now onwards I don’t need Your love and guidance.” The ‘bridge’ has collapsed’

For any parent, such words are a stab, not in the back, like Brutus’, but right through the heart. No parent can ever imagine such words to be uttered by his son or daughter. It is unnatural, it is inhuman. But God, though He does not possess a human heart, like ours, His regard, interest for us, His love towards us, His children, are ‘perfect’, they are more refined and more sensitive than those of our natural parents.

When we ask Him to forgive us, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or in our prayers, we will be actually asking Him to show us, to teach us how to reciprocate His love. And God’s reaction will be an abundance of graces to show His gratitude and love. That is just how Christ reacted in next Sunday’s Gospel Text.
The woman in question was not invited for Simon’s feast for a very simple reason. The Pharisees, the Scribes and teachers always made a short-listing of their invited guests. They never included sinners or people of loose morals; shepherds, the poor, the widows and the sick … these were not favoured by God (according to them). So this woman was an intruder who everybody knew. Why, or how everybody knew her, is a different matter.

But she did go in, and she had one aim in mind. After a brief cursory look at all the invited guests, her eyes settled on the person she was looking for, Jesus of Nazareth. She lost no time in approaching Him, holding an alabaster jar. She loosened her hair, which was against the Jewish culture to do. Only inside their home, in front of her husband, she could loosen her hair.

She knelt in front of Him, weeping, washed his feet with her tears, of sorrow … and happiness, and wiped them with her own hair, kissed them and poured the perfume on them (vv. 36-39). One can imagine what passed through the heads of the ‘special guests’. They even dared saying that Jesus can’t be a prophet, otherwise he would have known what kind of a woman was touching and kissing His feet.

Why does she behave this way? The simplest explanation would seem to be this: the woman has committed many sins, but one day she was seized with remorse, repented and went to ask forgiveness from Jesus. She began to love ‘much’ and, with this love, has managed to have her sins forgiven.

Why did she go to Jesus? To express her gratitude. Since she met him everything about her has changed. His words have worked in her the miracle. How to express the joy she feels? With gestures that her affection, heart, feminine sensitivity suggest: the perfume, the kisses, loosened hair, the tears. Gestures that rattled and scandalized those present.