Instructive Moment About Forgiveness

I always get this parable mixed up with the one where Judas goes off on a rant because of the money the perfume would have generated to feed the poor... perhaps they are the same story from differing points of view.

For me, the element of giving away the most valuable thing you have is what's at stake here. This woman had nothing left of value... no dignity, no purity, no reputation, no nothing. But she had tears, hair and a bottle of perfume. All of it went to Jesus. What she had, she lavished on him. How embarrassing for the host. How uncomfortable to watch such a visible display of affection, and from the wrong kind of person in his house. Adding insult to injury, Jesus takes her side, turns the tables and reveals how little the Pharisee has given in his capacity as host. Talk about a slap in the face. Yet these slaps are exactly what I need on a regular basis. My pride, vanity, denial all get in the way of my instinctive knowledge that I am in debt up to my eyeballs, and Jesus is the one who wrote "paid" on the tab.

Gire writes: My debt is great, O Lord.
He doesn't know the half of it. This is my story: While the twin towers were under attack I was standing in a satellite terminal at Grand Central Station, trying to arrange an airline ticket so I could meet a man for the weekend in Orlando, Florida. The man was married (to someone else) and this was my eighth year of being in an on-again-off-again affair with him. For some reason I couldn't make up my mind about the ticket, so I put a 24 hour hold on it, and hurried outside to get on to work. On the street I found out what was happening in lower Manhattan. It was, as they say, a turning point for me. I didn't slept with him (or anyone else) again. By the Grace of God's most precious Love, I received another chance to repent, just like this woman in the story. We are so alike; I like to think she changed her life as well.