Love Covers a Multitude of Sins"

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus dining with a Pharisee and with others. This particular Pharisee was shocked that Jesus permitted a woman who was known to be a sinner to touch Him. According to the cleanliness laws, a person could become unclean by simply touching certain kinds of people. For example, a person could become unclean by touching a sinner who had committed a certain kind of sin. A prostitute was certainly that kind of a person. A person could also become ritually unclean through certain normal life cycles and events, as well as from doing certain righteous deeds that you were commanded to do, like burying the dead, for example. If someone was ritually unclean, they had to undergo certain ritual rites to make themselves ceremonially clean again. We find Jesus coming into physical contact with those who are ritually unclean continuously in the gospels. But Jesus instead of considering himself unclean would on the contrary declare the other person clean. Thus, Jesus, in today’s passage forgives the sins of this woman. In the Old Testament only God can forgive sins. On a human-to-human level a person can only forgive another if the sin was committed against them in particular. But, a person cannot forgive another for the sins one did not commit against them. But Jesus does indeed forgive this woman for her sins even though she did not commit any sins against Jesus. The audience could only conclude two things – that either she had committed a sin against Jesus or that Jesus was assuming the place of God. Jesus did what only God could do, and forgave her sins. This understandably shocked His audience, since they did not necessarily believe Him to be God Himself, and yet they clearly recognized the act of Jesus forgiving sins as Jesus making a claim to be the one true God.

But the important message from this Gospel is Jesus’ point about the relationship between the greatness of one’s love and how much one has been forgiven. In fact, Jesus does contrast the love of the Pharisee with that of the sinful woman. The real difference between the two was not their social status or their profession, but rather, how deeply and sincerely they loved God. Jesus could not deny the joy of forgiveness to the woman who loved so much in order to protect his own reputation. He was indeed God and he forgave her sins in response to her sincere love.

Today, let us not focus on our sins. We sure have a lot of them. Rather, let us recall the mercy of God in our own lives. This is more easily said than done. It takes much faith to believe that God loves us more than he hates our sin. Let our love for God give us the courage to get ourselves to the feet of Jesus. And when we get there, let us spend our time loving God than wallowing in self-pity. That was the only difference between Peter and Judas. They both denied Jesus. However, Peter could bring himself to love Jesus again and Judas could not. He could not look beyond his sins.

As the popular biblical saying goes, “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8).