Both the first reading and Gospel for today share a key theme: mercy engenders love. In the Gospel, an unnamed “sinful woman” comes to anoint the feet of Jesus in the house of a Pharisee, bathing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair in an extravagant demonstration of love and gratitude. And in the face of the scandalized Pharisee, Jesus offers an explanation: Her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.
Paul, too, in recounting the Gospel he preached to the Corinthians in the first reading, reveals the source of his great love and zeal for Christ. Although he regards himself the least of the Apostles, not fit to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of God, nevertheless Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, last of all of the Apostles, as to one born abnormally. And Paul regards the mercy God showed him in that appearance so great that it moved him to toil harder than all the other Apostles!
The invitation to us today, then, is to recall the wondrous mercy of God in our own lives, asking that we might be filled with love and gratitude for such an immense gift. Then, moved to such great love, we can go out and show God’s own mercy to our brothers and sisters.