Having celebrated the great mysteries of our Redemption and Source of sanctification, the Church returns to Ordinary time, to her daily journey in the footsteps of Jesus. Somewhat surprisingly after all the joy, our readings this Sunday remind us of two important elements in our lives, penance and forgiveness.

Many of us connect repentance with the Sacrament of Penance whose setting now allows a room where one can choose the anonymity of the screen or the openness of a personal experience of penitent with confessor. The setting may have changed somewhat but the elements remain the same: sorrow and acknowledgement of sin, forgiveness and the promise to avoid sin in the future, and a “penance” which reminds us that sin has consequences.

In penitential times, the Church uses the color purple which is the color of the priest’s stole, often trimmed in white, when he hears confessions. We go from the purple of penance to the white of forgiveness. If one could imagine a color pervading this Sunday’s Scripture, it would be purple moving to white light. The readings speak of sin and misinterpretation, of repentance and forgiveness.

In the reading from the Old Testament we hear the end of a tragic story. Following his illicit affair with Bathsheba and her subsequent pregnancy, David had arranged the death of her husband in battle. Later Nathan confronted David with a parable of a man, rich in livestock, who took the one beloved lamb a poor man possessed and slaughtered it for a meal with his company, a stranger. The powerful one committed an unjust and callous act against the powerless one.

In Sunday’s reading, David has realized that he is the rich man of the story as he hears Nathan’s prophecy of God’s punishment. Deeply sorry, David repents and Nathan responds with the words of God’s forgiveness. The purple lifts and the brightness of forgiveness descends in relief. Sin will have its consequences, however, as does misunderstanding which we hear in the second reading from St. Paul.

In Sunday’s passage from Galatians, we hear an angry, perhaps purple-faced, Paul scolding the community for having listened to preachers who appear to have taught them that faith in Christ Jesus needed the ethical guidance of the Mosaic Law to be complete. Paul hammers home his point: faith in Jesus and imitation of Christ’s life provides the fullness of keeping God’s Covenant.

Rather than rules for external moral behavior, Paul tells the community, faith in Jesus and caring for one another is essential. Jesus has pierced the purple of sometimes burdensome law and imbued life with the brightness of God’s love. It is this love which Jesus shows the woman in our Gospel reading where we see a stark contrast between the rude, sinful host of the dinner and the woman.

The host’s rude behavior in not offering Jesus the amenities of hospitality expected at that time is contrasted with the quiet but powerfully moving acts of penance by the woman, a known sinner. In our imagination we can see her summoning up the courage to go into the room where only men were allowed, not to solicit but to elicit forgiveness. Tears flow from her eyes in a face possibly purple in embarrassment, her hair falls on Jesus’ feet as she gently wipes away the droplets which must have seemed like the dew on the grass at the dawn of a new day.

Kisses and oil soothe, healing both the indignity which Jesus had suffered and the woman’s inner wound of sin.

Tears, hair, kisses, oil, purple sorrow hears the words: “Your sins are forgiven. . . .Your faith has saved you, go in peace.” The woman finds the bright light of forgiveness and goes on her way, much as we do when our celebrant at Mass offers us the same invitation to go in peace. The woman goes on her way and so does Jesus accompanied by His disciples including two who later will find the empty tomb, Joanna and Mary Magdalene (Lk. 24: 10).

Jesus’ journey will lead to purple and light, pain and ultimate resurrection. This is true for us as well. When we repent we will find the light of forgiveness waiting to burst through to us. Thus, we can sing with the responsorial psalm: “I confess my faults to the Lord,” and you take away the guilt of my sin.

The Readings as we return to Ordinary Time offer an invitation to repent and experience God’s forgiveness. On this weekend when we celebrate fathers in a special way, is there something we might like to say to our fathers which might heal a rift? Could our expressed appreciation of his love heal something for him?

Might this be a good time to seek God’s forgiveness, particularly in the Sacrament of Penance? For many of us, can we sing the refrain, “Lord, take away my sin,” and let the purple be tinged with the light of God’s forgiveness? I pray that I can; please pray with me.

    Readings:
    2 Sam. 12: 7-10, 13
    Gal. 2: 16, 19-21
    Luke 7: 36-38, 3 or 7: 36-50