Homily on the Sinful Woman Who Anointed the Lord with Myrrh, and on the Pharisee (St. Amphilochios of Iconium)

Homily on the Sinful Woman Who Anointed the Lord with Myrrh, and on the Pharisee 

Discourse 4

By St. Amphilochios of Iconium

Christ sufficiently delighted us before, dining at the house of Zacchaeus; for where Christ is entertained and reclines together with men and partakes of drink and of table that is ours, all things are transformed into the condition of joy.

For who, whether of tax collectors or of harlots or of those who have worked unspeakable evils, seeing the Maker of heaven and earth having come under a tax collector’s roof, and the Giver of the ears of grain taking bread of men into His hands, and the Provider of the clusters blessing the winepresses by participation in the drink, would not judge the matter to be a feast and a festival?

This is truly a feast, this truly the gladness of an angelic banquet: to see the Master with servants, God with men, the Judge with those under judgment, partaking of a common table.

For this reason He came upon the earth, not having left heaven deserted, and became man, not having stripped off being God, in order that, sailing also upon the sea, He might draw up from the depth of sin those storm-tossed in the sea of life, and going about villages and cities, running through narrow ways and paths and roads, He might lead back to His own flock those wandering at the crossroads like sheep without a shepherd.

For He Himself is the One seeking the lost sheep, the One having left the ninety-nine and having come for the seeking of the one.

For He was seeking the one, neither despising the many nor preferring the one over the multitude.

But the ninety-nine He left behind — for it was necessary that they be safely lodged in the fold — while the one He went about seeking, lest it become a banquet for the devil.

For a sheep without a shepherd is a ready meal for beasts, and a soul without seal is easily plotted against by demons.

Therefore recently He snatched Zacchaeus as a sheep from the mouth of the wolf and mingled him with the flock and deemed him worthy of the seal.

For just as a shepherd, wishing to capture a wandering sheep, lets loose a tame animal, so that roaming freely it may draw the one that has strayed into the trap, so also the Word of God, the flesh which He took from the Virgin, He let as a sheep in pasture at the table of Zacchaeus, in order that by the common law of table-fellowship He might draw him into association and secretly join him to His own flock.

But not understanding this, the Pharisees were murmuring, seeing Him eating with tax collectors.

But let those men burst like an old wineskin, for they are not able to receive the new wine of teaching; but let us follow after the loving Shepherd.

For He who joined Zacchaeus the tax collector to the rational flock of the apostles, He also drew the harlot, the sinful woman, the worker of countless evils, from the throat of the devil like a lamb and restored her to the unharmed fold.

And that you may know both the love of mankind of Christ and the irrationality of the Pharisees and the repentance of the sinful woman, I will set before you the very evangelical sayings; for if you hear the height of the reading, you will easily also draw out the meaning of the interpretation.

“And one of the Pharisees,” he says, “asked Jesus that He might eat with him. And entering into the house of the Pharisee, He reclined.”

O grace ineffable! O love for mankind unspeakable!

He dines with Pharisees and does not reject tax collectors, and receives harlots and speaks with a Samaritan woman and deems a Canaanite worthy of a word and grants to the woman with the flow of blood the hem. Yes, for He is physician of all, touching the sufferings, in order that He may benefit all, both evil and good, ungrateful and thankful.

Therefore also now, having been invited by the Pharisee, He enters into a house formerly full of evils. For where there is a Pharisee, there is a launching-place of wickedness, a lodging of sin, a reception of arrogance.

But even with the house being thus disposed, the Lord does not deem it unworthy to enter. For just as the sun is not harmed by casting its own rays upon mud, but rather even wipes away the foulness that is in it, suffering no insult itself, so also Christ, as Sun of righteousness, takes hold of every impure and profane place and consumes the foul-smelling sin by the rays of His goodness, undergoing neither insult nor diminution nor defilement according to the principle of His divinity.

Therefore He readily assented to the Pharisee calling Him, being calm, being silent, leaving his life unexamined.

First, in order that He might sanctify those invited, the one who invited Him, the arrangement of the house, the foods of luxury; then, showing that the incarnation was not a phantom, from the reclining, the eating, the drinking, the use of foods.

And again, since the harlot was about to come and to show that fervent and burning manner of repentance, for this reason He quickly assents to the one inviting Him, so that before the eyes of scribes and Pharisees, having dramatically displayed her own evils, she might teach them how those who grieve over sins must propitiate God.

For behold, he says, a woman in the city, who was a sinner.

A woman — the easily-slipping nature, the first net of the devil, the introduction of deception, the teacher of transgression, the one who became a helper but was shown to be an enemy, the one who became by nature good but by choice was proved evil, the cause of death, the one who showed the beauty of the tree and lost the whole paradise.

“And behold,” he says, “a woman in the city, who was a sinner,” bearing the burdens of Eve, weighed down with many evils.

But I will speak of the abundance of her former evils, in order that you may know the richness of her repentance.

God, having taken a bone from the side of Adam and having clothed it with flesh, made Eve, whom having called woman He gave as a helper to Adam.

But after the sin and the transgression of the law and the expulsion from paradise and the receiving of death as punishment, lest the race, being utterly consumed by death, should perish, He brings in marriage against death, so that one may sow and another reap, one may cut and another may sprout.

And that after being subjected to death the grace of marriage was given is clear from the fact that Adam, after the departure from paradise, was joined to Eve.

For it is written that after going out from paradise, then Adam knew his wife.

Before the sin, therefore, virginity was keeping the garment of nature undefiled; but after the transgression, after the sentence of death, marriage was introduced, so that by drawing out death it might conquer, and by sprouting and bringing forth it might overcome.

Since, therefore, for succession of the race and for increase of nature the law of marriage was given, it implanted pleasure in the man, and made the female persuasive; not in order that they be stirred to intercourse like courtesans, but that they be joined lawfully unto marriage.

Therefore the lawful union of marriage is honorable before God, but that which is performed for the sake of pleasures is subjected to death.

For honorable is marriage and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

Those, therefore, who lawfully unite with their husbands for the sake of childbearing are blameless, like Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel, and whoever else is like them; but those who, for the sake of pleasure, stir up the young to licentiousness, as corrupting the temple of God, are delivered over to destruction.

For if anyone, he says, destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.

Of whom also this one was one — the sinner now at hand.

For trafficking in her own nature and with external dyes reddening her cheeks and by art forcing herself to appear beautiful, she drew the young into licentiousness, unsuspectingly leading them into the abyss of fornication.

But these things I say not mocking her for what she did before, but praising her for what she has suddenly become from what she was; for I say what she was, in order that I may show what she has become now; I speak of the falls of her sin, in order that I may show the achievements of her repentance.

But she, who before did not use her body blamelessly, ensnaring some by curls, drugging others by tears, enchanting others by ointment, and calling all from everywhere into the mire of licentiousness, transforms her shameful and pleasure-loving love into a divine and heavenly affection.

For when she saw Jesus, at one time freely conversing with the Samaritan woman, at another receiving the Canaanite woman, at another proclaiming the theft of the woman with the flow of blood, and now eating with tax collectors, and again entering the houses of Pharisees, she reasoned:

“If He receives harlots and sinners and tax collectors, how long shall I, raging without restraint, draw up the sea of sin? I do not remain young, I do not remain beautiful; for all things pass away, all things wither, both flowers and lilies and the beauty of faces.

What then shall I suffer for what I have done? For already I conceive the fire of Gehenna, already repentance takes hold of my soul, because striving to appear beautiful for the destruction of the young, I ran in the streets of the city, in the marketplaces, in the alleys, having my feet as a net and my tongue as a dragnet.

O how many young men I bewitched, carrying about a gaze full of shamelessness! For the ruin of the spectators, adorning myself, at one time I built up my head with elaborate braids, at another I let wandering locks from the crown roam upon my forehead; at another I reddened my cheeks and painted my eyes, and at another I shed streams of tears, loosening my soul into flattery.

What then shall I become after these things? What physician shall I find for these countless sufferings? If I tell men the things concerning myself, the manner of confession becomes of no benefit to me.

But shall I hide my evils? But I am not able to escape notice; for whom shall I escape, being unable to escape God?

Where then shall I flee, finding everywhere the Judge, who is not seen, yet everywhere exposing my evils?

One hope of salvation remains to me, one provision for life lies before me: to recognize Jesus and to run to Him.

For He who receives tax collectors does not reject a harlot; He who eats with Pharisees does not refuse the tears of a sinner.

Since therefore I have learned that He is staying with Simon the Pharisee, a leprous and sinful man, I will run to Him.

But what shall I ask when I approach? Health of eyes? But the grace is temporary. Release from disease? But the achievement is small, for eternal death is heavier than the present.

Leaving aside all things of the body, I will seek the healing of the soul.

For I find one solution of the evils that hang over me: if I see the Judge, if I anticipate the time of punishment.

I will imitate Rahab the harlot; I will pursue the virtuous manner of a woman; for God wants nothing from us except a change of mind."

Having thus piously considered these things and having anointed her understanding toward faith, she enters in to Jesus where He was reclining, taking her former shamelessness as a ground of boldness.

And she says nothing to Him — for she did not dare — for she knew that the Overseer of thoughts has no need of words.

For what had she to say to the One who knows all things? That she sinned? That she became a worker of many evils? That loving and being loved she served common pleasure?

These things were known to God, not only being done, but also being laid bare in the hidden council of the soul.

Knowing therefore that He knows all things and that nothing can escape Him, she closes her tongue but speaks with tears.

For standing, he says, beside His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with tears.

But even if she did not speak with the tongue, she uttered with unspoken groanings, revealing the contrition of the heart, triumphing over the multitude of sins, sending away the improper thoughts, the impure intentions, the profane deeds, the unlawful associations; for there was none of the evils done by her which she did not dramatize with tears.

For she knew that of those things which she confessed she was receiving forgiveness. For he says, “I said, I will confess my lawlessness to the Lord, and You forgave the ungodliness of my heart.”

And not only silently did she speak with the groanings of the heart, entreating the Lord, but also by outward form she depicted the beauty of repentance.

She wept, as having laughed much before, washing away the evil laughter with good tears, and with the drops of her eyes cleansing the stain of her cheeks, so that in the things in which she sinned, in those same things she might also make defense, in those in which she transgressed, in those she might propitiate the Lawgiver.

For just as David washed with tears the bed which he had unlawfully defiled by union — “For I will wash,” he says, “every night my bed; with my tears I will wet my couch” — so also she, through the eyes by which she had drawn many of the young into licentiousness, pouring forth fountains of tears, washed away the hard-to-clean stain of sin, presenting to herself tears as a bath of repentance.

For she herself supplied the tears as water, but received invisibly from Christ the forgiveness.

But indeed also perhaps not only imitating Abraham but surpassing him, she washed the feet of Christ.

For he, having set a basin, washed with water and wiped with a towel; but she, not having drawn water, but having released fountains of tears, washed the feet of Jesus.

And sparing lest by sinful tears she insult the holy feet, placing the beauty of her hair as a towel, she wiped His feet.

And it was possible to see the whole woman entirely bending toward the service of Jesus: for the eyes from above were sending streams like fountains of tears, the soul as if a basin being placed beneath was receiving the drops falling from the feet, the locks were wiping, fulfilling the form of a towel, and the hands pouring out the alabaster of ointment were anointing the divine feet with myrrh, honoring the Myrrh with myrrh; for “myrrh poured out,” he says, “is Your name.”

Do you see how a sinful woman, deprived of divine laws, overcame the ungrateful mind of the Jews?

For they were casting stones at Him, but she was gladdening Him with fragrances of myrrh.

But the Jews, as ungrateful, as senseless and thankless, repaid the benefactor with evils, greeting with stones the chief cornerstone; but she anointed with myrrh the feet which were about for her sake to stand all day upon the wood of the Cross.

And why do I say that she overcame the ungrateful people of the Jews, when indeed she surpassed the whole choir of the saints?

For she received a grace which kings did not receive, which rulers did not attain.

For “kings of Tarshish and the islands shall bring gifts, and all the kings of the earth shall worship Him.”

And indeed, according to the prophet, they gave gifts and worshiped from afar, but none of them kissed the feet of Jesus.

How? The Magi came, having taken the star as a guide and ally, but from afar they brought gifts, knowing the measure of their own rank.

For “Heaven,” he says, “is My throne, and the earth is the footstool of My feet.”

Let then the woman be praised, as having received the honor of the whole earth, as having touched the spotless feet whose dust nations and tribes shall lick, according to that which is said, that they shall lick the dust of His feet.

She touched the spotless feet; she shared with John the body of Christ.

For he reclined upon the breast, for from there he was about to draw divine teaching; but she anointed the feet that walked for our sake.

But Christ, who does not judge the sin but praises the repentance, who does not punish the past, but examines the things to come, passing over her former evils with forgiveness, honors the woman and praises the repentance, justifies the tears and crowns the intention.

But the Pharisee, seeing the wonder, is struck in mind, and being smitten with envy does not accept the repentance of the woman, but even strikes with insult the one who has thus honored the Lord, and diminishes the dignity of the One honored, condemning His knowledge.

For seeing, he says, the Pharisee who had invited Him said within himself: “This man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what sort of woman this is who touches Him, that she is a sinner.”

O foolish and senseless and altogether Pharisee! Saying these things, you do not expose the manner of the woman, but you accuse your own disposition, saying that He does not know who the woman was.

Therefore you did not honor Him as God, knowing all things, by your invitation; do you not feel shame, O splendid accuser and slanderer, that you call Him as God and as able to bless, yet cry out against Him as a man and as knowing nothing beyond us?

“This man,” he says, “if He were a prophet.”

And how much better than you, O Pharisee, is the woman in Sychar, who, not knowing Him to be a prophet, from the first sight gratefully confessed the Savior: “Lord,” she says, “I perceive that You are a prophet.”

And how much more admirable than you is this sinful woman, whose sin you see, but whose repentance you do not see.

But you even condemn her whom the Judge justifies, and you blame and reproach her whom God, having accepted, crowns; because seeing before you God lying in the form of a man, she recognized and honored Him, and uncovering the wounds of her soul she asked for mercy and for forgetfulness of her past deeds.

But you, having honored Him by invitation, dishonor Him by insult, saying: “If He were a prophet, He would know who and what sort of woman this is who touches Him.”

Wretched man! Because He did not expose your own evils, do you condemn His knowledge?

Because He entered under your roof weighed down with many evils, do you deny His knowledge?

But since you deemed Him worthy to enter under your roof, to recline with you, and to lay hand upon your foods, do you think Him one of the many?

Were you worthy to receive God as a guest, or to set a table for Him who prepares a table in the wilderness?

But being loving toward mankind, He did not refuse to receive drink and food even from your servants.

Why then do you accuse the loving Master, O Pharisee, who equally weighs the balance of goodness toward all?

Why, straining out the gnat of the woman, do you swallow the camel of your own evils?

And for yourself you wish God to be long-suffering, but toward her harsh?

Why do you provoke the Judge over the faults of others, while asking forgiveness for your own?

Why have you agreed with Judas to tempt the Lord?

For you, as if pure from defilement, by reproaching the sins of the woman condemn the knowledge of God; and he, as if caring for the poor, is indignant saying: “Why this waste of the ointment? For it could have been sold for much and given to the poor.”

O the ungrateful mind! O the thankless ways!

You call the service of Christ loss, O Judas, and you call that which was spent for the honor of God a vain expense?

How much have we given compared to what we have received?

Let us reckon from the time the world came into being, how many rivers flow from His mercy by nature, and God does not count abundance as loss.

How many fragrances does the earth produce? How many of roses and lilies, and storax, nard, and stacte, and the rest from which fine ointment is prepared?

And God does not count it as loss.

And when a small alabaster of ointment is poured upon the feet of Christ, do you murmur?

Did she receive it for nothing, that you murmur?

She took ointment and showed the manner of repentance; she offered tears and set up a fountain against sins.

What then is the loss, if the woman was saved, through whom paradise had been shut, through whom Adam had been cast out?

But does this grieve you, O Judas? Fittingly; for even the devil was grieved at her salvation.

For her salvation grieved him; for he saw that through her the race thereafter was being turned toward repentance, and he is bitten and is vexed, no longer having a net by which he may catch man; therefore he also urged you to murmur.

“Why,” he says, “this loss? For it could have been sold for much.” Already a selling, O Judas? Already a practice of betrayal, a beginning of evil contrivances?

But Jesus does not expose his sickness, does not lay bare the love of money, lest He hinder the coming betrayal.

But Christ, rebuking, says: “Why do you trouble the woman? Why, in addition to her former evils, do you afflict the person? The race of women has done enough; let no one hinder their salvation, let no one trouble the one who has anointed with myrrh the feet that walked upon the earth for her sake.

For the poor you always have with you, but take also Me among the poor; for your sake I became poor, being rich, that you by My poverty might become rich.

You kill Me and I do not accuse; she buries Me and you murmur? For she, having cast the ointment upon My body, has done it for My burial.

Do you not feel shame, O Judas, that she, being a sinner, honors Me with myrrhs, while you, being an apostle, insult Me by selling Me?

And the woman prepares the things for burial, while the disciple delivers Me to death.

The woman is a sinner, I know; but she had nothing to offer Me except a fountain of tears, appeasing the Fountain with a fountain, bringing to the immaterial Master an immaterial propitiation.

But you, wretched man, test the ointment as worth three hundred denarii, not in order to praise her greatness of soul, that she spent all the wealth gathered from evils for the honor of myrrh, but in order, by murmuring, to show that you have fallen into an intolerable evil, having been deprived of so much.

But it is not great that you are distressed over the loss of three hundred denarii, when having received thirty you sold the Lord.

“For what,” he says, “will you give me, and I will deliver Him to you?”

Wretched man, does a servant sell the Master? The order has been overturned; and I purchase you from sin with My own blood, and you sell Me for thirty pieces of silver?

And then, does a man sell God? Granted that he sells—who is the one buying? And for how much will one purchase God? Why do you make the matter cheap?

Someone sells God in the form of a man for thirty pieces of silver, as a servant, as a barbarian? And even if you distinguish, how much for the indwelling God, and how much for the visible man?

“What will you give me?” he says. What do you wish to receive? For they have nothing to give equal to God.

“And they set for him,” he says, “thirty pieces of silver.”

For thirty coins someone sells a physician without price, a physician giving sight to the blind, raising the lame to run?

I say these things in order to instruct your mind, that you trouble the woman, that she honored as dead the One free among the dead even before death, that through the myrrh she foreshadowed the grace of burial and resurrection.

But you will have the fruit of betrayal - the rope; but her memory, wherever the gospel is preached, shall be unerasable.

He spoke, and the matter came to pass thus: for the ointment of Aaron, the ointment of Eleazar has ceased, and the horn has become idle, but her alabaster extends through all ages, having the fragrance of memory inexhaustible.

But to Judas thus, and to the Pharisee murmuring Christ says thus: “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

O grace ineffable! O love for mankind unspeakable! God and man converse together, and He sets forth a question and a rule of love for mankind, dissolving his wickedness.

“For Simon,” he says, “I have something to say to you; I have to say what I have said to none of the ancients, neither to patriarch, nor prophet, nor lawgiver.

For then they demanded justice, ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth’; but since you are not able to bear justice, I introduce grace in place of the law; I will speak to you an unspeakable mystery.”

And he says, “Teacher, say it.”

“There were two debtors to one man.” See the wisdom of God:

He passes over the woman, lest He corrupt the answer.

“One,” He says, “owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.”

Fearful is the manner of the account: our life is a ledger invisibly writing both thoughts and deeds and wanderings of the eyes and movements of the soul.

But the loving lender loosens the fear, who tears up the records of sin, and not only tears them up but also smooths them away with the waters of baptism, so that no trace of letter or syllable may remain as a reminder of past evils.

“But when they did not have to repay,” He says, “he forgave both.”

Do you see the loving lender, how he lends but does not receive back? And how, being treated ungratefully, he does not grow weary, but his hand is stretched out to those who ask?

“When they did not have,” He says, “to repay, he forgave both.”

He forgave those who did not have, not those who did not will; for it is one thing not to have and another not to will.

What I say is this: God asks nothing from us except repentance; therefore He wills us always to rejoice and to run to repentance.

If then, while we wish to repent, the multitude of sins shows our repentance weak, we do not pay the debt not because we do not will, but because we do not have.

For this reason He says, “when they did not have,” in order to show that seeing them willing through repentance to repay the debt, but not able because of the multitude of sins, as loving toward mankind He forgave them, freeing from the debt not by works but by disposition.

“When they did not have,” therefore, “to repay,” without whipping, without torturing, without delivering them to insult, he forgave both.

“Which then of them will love him more?”

And Simon answering said, “I suppose that he to whom he forgave more.”

See the craftiness of the Pharisee: when he saw himself already being shut out by the word of truth, he placed “I suppose,” fearing to give a complete answer.

But the Lord did not record his opinion, but seizing the answer says to him: “You have judged rightly.”

And turning toward the woman, He said to Simon: “Do you see this woman—the sinner, the one rejected by you, but saved by Me?

I entered into your house—your house, and not Mine, full of insult—you gave Me no water for My feet, the feet which for your sake were covered with dust, which endured toil in order that I might free those who toil and are burdened from toil.

You offered half the honor: you admired what is above, but did not minister to what is below.

But you gave Me no water for My feet; but she, having released fountains of tears from her eyelids, wiped away the stain of her sin.

You gave Me no kiss—would that Judas also had not worked betrayal by a kiss!—but she, from the moment she entered, did not cease kissing My feet.

You did not anoint My head with oil; for the oil of a sinner shall not anoint My head. How then did you have it to honor the head, when you neglected the feet?

But she anointed even My feet prophetically with myrrh; for ‘myrrh poured out is Your name’—poured out, not merely poured.

For since the vessel of the Jewish mind was rotten, therefore from your alabaster the myrrh was poured out upon My feet, so that through Me the grace of fragrance might be transferred to the nations.

For this reason I say to you: her many sins are forgiven; because you, having received Me under the same roof, did not honor Me even with a kiss nor serve Me with ointment; but she, having received forgiveness of many evils, honored Me with tears and myrrh, as though mixing a twofold cup.

Let us therefore bless the woman who covered the evils of Eve, the sinner, the harlot, the cause of good things, the one who showed the manner of repentance and revealed the law of love for mankind, the one who made the Judge Himself her advocate, the one who by tears overcame the lament of judgment.

All who are present, therefore, imitate what you have heard, and do not imitate the pleasure of the harlot, but the mourning.

For pleasure gave birth to mourning, but mourning produced the dissolution of evils.

Wash therefore your body not with water, but with tears; anoint your members not with ointments, but with purity.

Clothe yourselves not with the garments of the Seres, but with the incorruptible garment of self-control, that you may attain the same glory, sending up grace to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, to whom be glory and honor, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Source: PG 39, 65–89. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.