Gradually the gospel discourse advances us to higher things and lifts us to the heights. Nor is it any wonder, brothers, if the ethereal chariot carried Elijah up to heaven (2 Kings 2), when daily this four-horse chariot of the Gospels bears the human race and conveys it to the kingdom. Behold, brothers, it has now brought us near, from the barren woman's childbearing to the Virgin's childbearing, and from John's birth to the birth of our Savior. But let us patiently hear what still remains concerning Zacharias the priest, that by a royal road we may reach the cradle of our King: for this very reason we have mounted the trusty seat of the heavenly chariot, that we might avoid the anxious and steep byways of shortcuts. Now indeed it was read:
And it came to pass, when the days of his office were fulfilled, that he departed to his own house (Luke 1). Thus a whole tribe attended upon one temple: thousands of priests served, and for this reason the very observance of the priestly office was divided among many, dispensed by times, distributed by turns, lest either a confused multitude should disturb the order of the priesthood, or one, by ministering continually, should deny the altar its due office. And after these things Elizabeth his wife conceived. They had the capacity for marriage, they were granted the license of begetting, in whom there was still the adolescence of the law, and the infancy of religion was still at hand. The law, brothers, forbade the unlawful; it did not deny the lawful; it held things within a gift, but above the gift it could confer nothing;
it governed nature, but did not raise man above nature. The law, the gate of faith, the herald of grace, the forerunner of the Gospel, the tutor of religion's infancy, permitted in the legal priesthood the chastity of the marriage bed, so that in the priesthood of grace it might announce the glory of perpetual virtue to come. According to this indulgence, therefore, Elizabeth, already dead by reason of years, revives unto a holy childbearing, and her limbs, dry and furrowed with wrinkles, grow green with vital marrow into a fruitful womb; the very season also, the very time in which it had ceased, is recalled to her body; and the house of the womb, decayed by excessive age, is suddenly restored to a new appearance; order is astounded, custom fails, nature herself marvels, and from the furnishing of the lodging the merit and dignity of the guest becomes known.
But John marveled greatly that he was a stranger in the common dwelling, he who learned that he was excluded by time, disowned by nature, and received therein by the benefit of the Author, not of a parent. And she hid herself five months, saying, thus has the Lord done for me. She confesses that the Lord had wrought the whole thing well, she who saw nothing conferred upon her through man. And she concealed herself five months, because although what she had was of a divine gift, yet it was not of her own time.
She hid herself five months. The pregnant old woman blushes, the aged crone is ashamed of her first childbirth, and extreme old age hides the woman in labor, lest the laughter over fruitful old age should increase the reproach of barrenness. That an aged and elderly conception is subject to laughter, Sarah, very similar in this barrenness and in age, proves (Genesis 18); for when she learned, at the Lord's promise, that childbearing was being restored to her and a son granted, to her who already nearly lacked life, she too laughed at her own childbearing; and that she, pregnant and burdened in her gray hairs, could be a cause of laughter to all, she attests by the very name of the offspring, as Scripture says: And she called her son's name Isaac (Genesis 21). She taught that this name is interpreted 'laughter,' adding: The Lord has made laughter for me.
Hence it is that Elizabeth wishes to conceal the sacred mystery, saying: Because thus has the Lord done for me. So that now modesty over the conception might weary her, just as the affliction of denied childbirth once grieved her; the father is silent by reason of his penalty, the mother conceals by reason of modesty. O how great a voice is born in silence! O with how great a silence is generated a trumpet destined to cry out to the ages! O what a secret brings forth the herald of the divine Judge! Because thus the Lord has done for me in the days in which He looked upon me to take away my reproach among men. The honor of marriage, the dignity of matrimony, is the procreation of sweet children; for it is grave enough and sad enough to lack the reward of virginity and yet not to have the solace of children, to bear the burdens of matrimony and yet not to come to the fruit of matrimony.
Hence it is that she rejoices that the reproach of barrenness was taken from her, saying: Because thus has the Lord done for me in the days in which He looked upon me to take away my reproach among men. For though this is reckoned wretched among men, before God there is no guilt where there is no fault of the parent, but only the judgment of Him who withholds. Certainly, if some bodily infirmity brings this about, necessity is the cause, not the will. But now let every sluggish notion of the flesh be removed, let all the weakness of bodily sense be cast off; and let whatever effort of human wit there is be shut out; let the eyes of faith be opened, the ears of the heart unlocked, and let the going of the mind run and press onward:
so that we may be able to reach the mystery of the virginal conception and to penetrate the sacrament of the virginal birth, with the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, begotten of her, now lives in the heavenly kingdoms with God the Father and the Holy Spirit through the infinite ages of ages. Amen. That Christ came to a dinner, and to a Pharisee's dinner at that, the anxious hearer perhaps wonders. Christ entered the house of the Pharisee, not to receive Jewish foods, but to bestow divine mercy; nor did He recline to take savory cups or dishes fragrant with flowers, but to drink the tears of the penitent from the very fountains of her eyes: God hungers for the groans of the erring, He thirsts for the tears of sinners. A certain Pharisee, it says, was asking the Lord to eat with him:
and having entered the house of the Pharisee, He reclined. And behold, a woman who was a sinner in the city, when she learned that the Lord was reclining in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment, and standing behind at His feet, she began to wet His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment (Luke 7). You see that Christ came to the Pharisee's table, not to be filled with carnal foods, but to display in the flesh a heavenly work; not to approve what was set before Him by human means, but to approve what was done behind Him by divine means.
For we always recognize that Christ exercised divine powers through human acts, since all the things done by Him even bodily are proved to be new and beyond the customs of mortals. The Pharisee invites Christ to dine: what does the uninvited woman seek there? A stranger does not burst through the bars of a house; one not invited does not presume to enter the privacy of a banquet; a wanton onlooker does not dare to disturb the foods prepared for the relaxing of minds after labor;
and what is this, that this woman, unknown, nay ill-famed, laden with griefs, full of tears, loud with lamentation, with the doorkeeper unaware, with none privy, with the very master of the house not knowing, runs through all the entrances of the house, passes through all the throngs of attendants, flies to the very privacy of the banquet, and makes the house of gladness a house of mourning and lamentation? Brothers, she came not asked but commanded; she entered as one presented, not presuming: He Himself so caused her to be set before Him, who by a heavenly sentence commanded her to be absolved. Finally, while the Pharisee, splendid in dress, foremost at the couch, in his very eyes,
swelling with pride before Christ, pouring himself out in festivity at the banquet to please man and not God, the woman comes, and comes from behind, because a guilty soul stands behind the back for pardon, since through her fault she knew she had lost the confidence of the countenance; she comes to make satisfaction to God, not to please man when she comes; she comes to spread a banquet of piety, not of pleasure. Finally, she sets a table of penitence, lays out dishes of compunction, brings in the bread of sorrow; she tempers the drink with tears in due measure, and for all the delights of the Deity she strikes the whole harmony of her heart and body; she raises the cry of the instrument of lamentation, she plays the harp through long sighs, she fits her groans into a pipe;
and while, accusing her very conscience, she often strikes her breast, she makes cymbals sound that will please God; and while she thus brings foods to the divine eyes, she carries back all the riches of mercy. Behold, a woman who was a sinner in the city. The evangelist magnifies the woman's crime, in order to heap up the indulgence of the Giver. A sinner in the city. She had sinned in the city, because her fame had touched the fame of the whole city; and thus she had become now not only a sinner, but the very sin of the city itself. She knew that the sin of the city could not be taken away except by Him alone who alone had come to abolish the sin of the world.
And when she learned that the Lord was reclining in the Pharisee's house. The sinner does not dare to come to Him standing, nor to Him sitting: God, when He stands, rebukes; when He sits, He judges; when He reclines, He lies down with the prostrate. When she learned that the Lord was reclining in the Pharisee's house, she learned that the majesty on high was inclined to have mercy; and therefore she believed that He would be ready to pardon her, He who had come so ready to the Pharisee's table. She brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She carried oil, because she sought from the Physician on high a medicine for a deadly wound. Standing behind at His feet. He who seeks quick pardon always tends toward the feet. And rightly standing, because he can no longer fall who has merited to reach the feet of Christ. Standing behind at His feet.
so that, leaning upon Christ's footsteps, she might run through the way of life, she who had run through the way of death. With her tears she wet His feet. By this the order of things is reversed: heaven always gives rain to the earth; behold, now the earth waters heaven, nay, above the heavens and even to the Lord Himself the shower of human tears leaps up, so that, according to the Psalmist, that word may be sung even of the waters of weeping: And let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord (Psalm 148). With her tears she wet His feet. O how great is the power in the tears of sinners! they water heaven, they wash the earth, they quench hell, they blot out the sentence pronounced by broad divine decree against every crime. And with the hairs of her head she wiped them. She washes the Lord's feet with tears, she wipes them with her hair. Poverty is free from any excuse;
inhumanity shall have no pardon, because nature in itself suffices for the service of the Creator. And with the hairs of her head she wiped them. Upon the sinner's head the wave flowed back to purge her crimes, so that by her own fountain the woman might wash away in a new baptism the filth of her sins. And with the hairs of her head she wiped them. So that, according to the Psalmist, the crown of the hair (Psalm 67), with which she had walked in her sins, she might turn into holiness by such service. And she kissed His feet. The intervening tears had gone first, so that devout kisses might follow, because tears are the proof of satisfaction and kisses are the tokens of reconciliation. And she anointed them with ointment.
We have learned, from another evangelist's account, that a woman poured oil upon the head of the Lord (Matthew 26): therefore what this woman does is not a service of soft and carnal kind, but a sacrament of full loving-kindness; because upon the head of Christ is God, and upon the feet is the peace of those who bring good news. Pray, brothers, that we too may deserve to be reckoned, in some measure, in the Lord's anointing, and be anointed with the ointment that is poured upon the Savior's feet: for just as it is an oblation when the ointment is offered, so it becomes a perfect chrism when it overflows from the Lord's footsteps. But of whom this woman bears the type, or how great a mystery she prefigures, we shall say, God granting, when the things that follow are expounded.