On the fifth Sunday of Lent we honor St Mary of Egypt, since she was such a dramatic example of a conversion 
from a life of deep sinfulness to one of profound holiness. Lent is all about repentance and conversion for the sake of a fruitful experience of the Paschal Mystery as well as for ongoing growth in holiness. So we read the gospel prescribed in her honor (Lk. 7:36-50) as well as the gospel prescribed for the Sunday (Mk. 10:32-45). I think that both of them taken together will help us to prepare better for Pascha.
First of all, let us look at the contrast in the two gospel readings between the approach to Jesus of the sinful woman and of the two “sons of thunder,” the apostles James and John. The woman stood behind him at his feet, weeping so much in her sorrow over her sins that her tears fell upon his feet; she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with fragrant oil. The apostles, on the other hand, stood before Jesus and asked to be granted the highest places in his Kingdom! Evidently they were not reflecting at that time upon their own unworthiness even to be in his presence. Jesus gently rebuked his disciples but granted his approval, forgiveness, and salvation to the repentant harlot.
Jesus also rebuked the Pharisee who had invited him to dinner, for he did not so much as offer the customary courtesies, while the woman that the Pharisee viewed with contempt gained the Lord’s favor by her humble veneration of Him. The key here, explained Jesus, is love. There are two complementary ways in which He presented this. One is that if you are forgiven much you will love much, and if you are forgiven little you will love little. The other is that if you love much you will be forgiven much, and if you love little you will be forgiven little.
Simon the Pharisee probably considered himself righteous according to the law. That’s why he felt justified in scorning the sinful woman, who was unrighteous according to the law, for he felt superior to her. Thinking himself to be righteous, he would have thought that he needed little or no forgiveness, so his love was small. He was self-sufficient—in his own eyes, anyway. And with his love being as small as it was, he disqualified himself from receiving the forgiveness that he really needed—if only his love were great enough to recognize it!
Now the woman loved much. Perhaps that’s what got her into a life of sin in the first place: she loved too much, but loved wrongly, unchastely. The fire in her heart had only to be properly re-directed. We see this also in the case of St Mary of Egypt. At first her lustful passion was insatiable, but when she turned to God, all her love was directed toward Him, and her passion became zeal for holiness and undying devotion to the Lord, even in the midst of severe hardships. Anyway, the sinful woman in the gospel was somehow stricken with the awareness of her sin, and she boldly went to Him—entering uninvited into the house of a stranger where Jesus happened to be—and threw herself at his mercy. Jesus forgave her sins and so her love increased even more, knowing what a heavy burden He had lifted from her. The Lord did not make light of her sins—He emphasized that they were many—but his mercy was greater still, and, to the astonishment of all the dinner guests, He forgave her sins then and there, declaring that her faith had saved her.
Here we see how faith and love are inseparably bound. Jesus said she was forgiven because she loved much, and then said it was her faith that saved her. You can’t really believe in Jesus without loving Him, and it seems obvious that you won’t love Him if you don’t believe in Him.
This faith and this love are what must enable us to go with Jesus to his Passion and to stand by his Cross. Jesus solemnly announces in the gospel: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be… condemned to death… and they will mock him and spit upon him and scourge him and kill him…” The Church proclaims this gospel on this Sunday because next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the arrival at Jerusalem. This is not a journey that the timid or the wavering can make. We need to be unshakable in our faith in Christ and love for Him. Jesus said to his own disciples at the Last Supper: “You will all fall away.” So they would fail when their faith and love were put to the test. Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him, and all the rest abandoned Jesus when He was arrested in the garden.
How shall we strengthen our faith and love, so that we can in spirit go with Jesus to Jerusalem, ritually re-live the mystery of his suffering and death, and receive the grace that He wishes to grant to those who lovingly and gratefully honor his complete self-sacrifice for our salvation? The Church offers us the usual and indispensable means: prayer, the sacraments, meditation on the word of God. But Jesus gives us an additional one in the gospel, one that is also indispensable if all the others are going to bear fruit: we have to learn how to serve, to acquire the heart and mind of a servant of the Lord.
James and John manifested just the opposite spirit in their request to Jesus. (These two are the same ones that Jesus earlier rebuked when they would call fire from heaven down upon their enemies—Jesus told them they did not realize what manner of spirit was in them.) They asked not to serve but to reign! They wanted the glory, but they hadn’t learned their lessons concerning the conditions by which glory is granted. That’s why Jesus told them: “You do not know what you are asking.” Then when Jesus asked them if they could drink the cup He had to drink, they responded—having no idea what this cup entailed—that they were able to do so. So they still didn’t get it. Then the rest of the disciples got all indignant—probably not only at the selfish ambition of the two, but also because those two thought of it first! They probably all wanted the highest places, because several times in the gospels it is mentioned that all the disciples argued with each other about who was the greatest.
None of them understood really what it meant to serve. So Jesus, after three years of teaching and example, had to sit them all down again and explain it. Whoever would be great among you, He said, must be a servant. Must be. It’s an indispensable condition. He didn’t say, if you want to be great in the eyes of God, it’s probably a good idea to be a servant as well. Jesus gave Himself as an example: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many.”
Let us return to the repentant harlot. She had it right. She fell at Jesus’ feet, humbled herself and wept over her sins, because she loved Him and believed that He had the power to forgive and save her. She was ready to serve Him for the rest of her life and probably did. She “got it,” unlike the apostles, who at this point were more like the Pharisee than the repentant woman. Only someone who is convinced of his own righteousness can ask for the glory without first taking the lowest place, without first serving. We serve, however, not merely as a necessary, though irksome, means to a glorious end, but because we recognize that that’s what we are, servants of the Lord, and in the very serving is our glory, our blessing, our forgiveness and salvation.
Behold, we are on our way to Jerusalem—not to make a pilgrimage to the holy places where Jesus once walked, but to mystically re-live with Him, now, his Passion: offering Him our faith and love, and recognizing the love with which He loved us in giving his life so that our sins might be forgiven. We have been forgiven much; let us love much. And as we love the more, we will be forgiven the more.
Let us, at last, learn what it means to serve. The coming two weeks will be rather arduous here in the monastery, with the long services, the fasting, the interior strain of entering with Christ into his anguish and pain—and you must also share this to the extent your state of life and the will of God requires. Let us acquire the heart of a servant, and not resist or resent the demands that will be placed upon us. Let us accept whatever difficulty or hardship these days will bring, offer the necessary sacrifices, be patient, forgiving, charitable, take it upon ourselves to go above and beyond what is strictly required, carry the burden of others—in short, let us be humble servants. We are sinners and we deserve nothing from God or man, but let us approach the Lord with faith, love, and humility, asking not for the glory but rather for the opportunity to serve, to be like Him, to give our lives for the sake of others: one day, one sacrifice at a time.
Then the Lord will look upon us not as upon the self-righteous Pharisee, and not even as upon his self-seeking disciples, but as upon the one who wept and kissed his feet, the one whom He blessed, and to whom He said, “Your sins are forgiven,” and “Go in peace; your faith has saved you.”
