Luke 7:46 — Community Reflections

LUKE 7:46 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.”

You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet — anointing the head with oil was a hospitality courtesy for honored guests; Simon omitted it. She poured expensive perfume — not on the head (which would have been more conventional) but on the feet, communicating the ultimate reversal of hierarchy: the most expensive gift given in the most humble form.

Church Fathers on Luke 7:46

Having said just before, And the people that heard him justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John the same Evangelist builds up in deed what he had proposed in word, namely, wisdom justified by the righteous and the penitent, saying, And one of the Pharisees desired him, &c.
Bede · 8th century

This account is full of precious instruction. For there are very many who justify themselves, being puffed up with the dreamings of an idle fancy, who before the time of Judgment comes, separate themselves as lambs from the herds, not willing even to join in eating with the many, and hardly with those who go not to extremes, but keep the middle path in life. St. Luke, the physician of souls rather than of bodies, represents therefore our Lord and Savior most mercifully…
Gregory of Nyssa · 4th century

A woman of corrupt life, but testifying her faithful affection, comes to Christ, as having power to release her from every fault, and to grant her pardon for the crimes she had committed. For it follows, And behold a woman in the city which was a sinner brought an alabaster box of ointment.
Cyril of Alexandria · 5th century

Read all 35 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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