Overview:

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

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;
hence, she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little. (Lk 7:46-47)

Find today’s readings here.

Do you have to always be good in order to become a saint? When I find myself gossiping about someone or thinking about past sins, it sometimes feels like I can’t be holy enough because I keep falling into the same traps. Or when I think about someone I know who has passed, who I know had her own faults—how could she be a saint? 

Today’s first reading and Gospel tie together very nicely, which is a goal for the daily readings, but not always the clearest to see. In the first reading, Paul explains to the Corinthians that he, who explained all of Christianity to countless peoples, is in fact the “least of the Apostles, not fit to be called an Apostle, because [he] persecuted the church of God.” 

The Gospel is the story of the sinful woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her hair, oil and her tears, while he dines at the house of the Pharisee, who believes that if Jesus were truly a prophet, he would not allow this woman to touch his feet. 

Using a parable about two people in debt to the same creditor with different amounts of money owed, Jesus cleverly asks the Pharisee if the person who has sinned more does not also have more reason to love for the forgiveness they experience. We do not know what the sin of the woman was, only that it was great. The Pharisee sees himself as more righteous and less sinful, which perhaps he was—but that does not diminish Jesus’ love for the woman. 

The happiness of humanity has the possibility, by reaching heaven, of greater joy than even Adam and Eve had before the Fall. The presence of sin, especially grave and plentiful sin, makes the return back to God even sweeter. 

Paul had been a zealous persecutor of Christians, then he spread the Gospel across the Mediterranean Sea, throughout much of the known world. Surely some who had known of the persecutions acted just as the Pharisee did in the Gospel, proudly thinking that they were better Christians than he was. But we still read Paul’s writings today—obviously he was just as holy, as beloved by Jesus, as the Twelve. 

And though we hear nothing more of the woman in the Gospel (she is likely not Mary Magdalene), we can assume that word of Jesus’ forgiveness and blessing must have passed her lips. She, too, must have spread the Gospel of the man who saw her as a person, not only as a sinner, and her faith and testimony are all the greater because of the sin from which she turned away. 

Do we have to be holy all the time to be a saint? Definitely not. Numerous saints, including St. Paul and the woman from the Gospel, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi and countless others, sinned openly and freely. The difference between them and someone unrepentant is that they turned back to God out of their own free will. So each time I curse someone for walking too slow, gossip about a friend or covet my friends’ lives, all I need to do is turn back. My mom’s soul is not in jeopardy, because she repented of her sins regularly and received last rites. The goal is obviously to avoid sin, but each time I do, I am reminded of the everlasting forgiveness, mercy and love of Jesus shown to each and every one of us, every second of the day.

Jill Rice is a 2022-23 O’Hare Fellow at America. She is now the SEO and Analytics Associate at America. She graduated from Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus and majored in classical languages and comparative literature.