by Father Alonzo Cox
AS A CHILD growing up, my family would spend summers in North Carolina. My mother grew up in a town called Williamston, which is about 30 miles west of Greenville, North Carolina. Williamston is a town that, to this very day, everybody knows each other!
Whether they meet up in the local supermarket, post office, or gas stations, somehow everybody knows each other and the happenings in their families.
We would spend about two weeks there in the summer, and I can honestly say that two weeks was my absolute limit. It’s a great place to visit, but I know that I could never live there for a number of reasons. I am what many of the locals of North Carolina would call a city boy.
Just a City Boy
I am accustomed to the hustle and bustle of New York City. I like being able to live in a city that never sleeps, not one that shuts down at sunset. I enjoy hopping on a subway and seeing the various aspects of New York City come alive, and its people. But what I really love about living in the city is that it’s so immensely populated that strangers surround me. The vast majority of people in this city have no idea who I am or the happenings in my family.
That is certainly not the case for the woman presented to us in today’s Gospel. Everybody knows who this woman is and what she is about. All the people in the city know that she is a sinful woman. Since they know that she is a sinful woman, their perception of her is that of a person who needs to be cast aside. No one should associate themselves with her because of who she is and what she has done.
Jesus, of course, does not do that. I love Jesus’ reaction when He is informed of who this woman is perceived as. He tells Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
“You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (Luke 7:44-47).
Jesus, in a very beautiful and pastoral way, puts them all in their place!
All Poor Sinners
We are all poor sinners, looking to get to the eternal kingdom of heaven. Each of us is called to fall before the feet of Our Lord, pleading for His mercy and forgiveness. Why then do we break each other down, or cast each other out because of the sins that we commit? All of us are called to love one another in the same way that God loves us. Our faith allows us to boldly and courageously proclaim God’s love for all of our brothers and sisters.
In our second reading today, St. Paul tells us so beautifully in his letter to the Galatians: “I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). As members of this family of believers, let us continue to pray for one another and not cast out any one among us. We are all united in God’s abiding love and mercy.
During this Jubilee Year of Mercy, let us keep the words of today’s psalm in our minds and hearts: “Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.”
Readings from the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Samuel 12: 7-10, 13
Psalm 32: 1-2, 5, 7, 11
Galatians 2: 16, 19-20
Luke 7: 36 – 8:3 or Luke 7 36-50
Father Alonzo Q. Cox is the pastor of St. Martin de Porres parish, Bedford- Stuyvesant, and the diocesan coordinator of ministry to African- American immigrants.