“Quoniam dilexit multum”: the sinful woman, the forgiven debt, and the one who received much

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 19 October 2026

Tradidi enim vobis in primis, quod et accepi. […] Remittuntur ei peccata multa, quoniam dilexit multum.
1 Cor 15:3 and Lk 7:47

Thursday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time places side by side the oldest formula of faith we possess and the scene of a woman weeping at the feet of Jesus in the house of a Pharisee. Paul recalls what he received and handed on: Christ died for our sins and rose on the third day. Luke shows what happens when someone grasps what this means for them. One reading gives the doctrine, the other gives the effect, and the second cannot be understood without the first.

I. The first reading: 1 Cor 15:1-11

This passage has a documentary value that few New Testament texts have. Paul introduces what follows with the technical verbs of transmission: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I myself received” (v. 3). He is quoting a formula that already predated him, probably learned a few years after Easter, and which the letter fixes around the year 56. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, rose on the third day according to the Scriptures, appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve.

Next comes the list of witnesses, with a detail that no one would invent in a legend: “he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living” (v. 6). It is an invitation to verification. Anyone who doubted could go and ask. And the list ends with the author himself, with a humility that is no mere figure of speech: “last of all, he appeared also to me, as to one untimely born” (v. 8). Paul calls himself the least of the apostles for having persecuted the Church, and resolves the tension in a sentence that sums up his whole theology: “by the grace of God I am what I am” (v. 10).

II. The Gospel: Lk 7:36-50

The scene is built on a contrast of hospitality. Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus and omits the elementary gestures of welcome: water for the feet, the kiss, oil for the head. The woman, who enters without an invitation, performs all three, and performs each of them in excess, with tears instead of water, with continual kisses, with perfume from an alabaster jar.

Jesus does not rebuke the Pharisee for what he is thinking; He answers him with a parable about accounting. Two debtors, five hundred denarii and fifty, both forgiven. Which will love more? Simon answers correctly, and the answer condemns him. Then comes the sentence that the spiritual tradition has never let go of: “her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much, but the one to whom little is forgiven loves little” (v. 47). That woman’s love did not buy forgiveness; it revealed it. What Simon lacked was not virtue but awareness of his own debt. Whoever thinks he owes little loves little, and loves little because he has miscalculated, not because he has been treated with less generosity.

III. Receiving before giving

The two texts rest on the same order. Paul hands on because he received. The woman loves because she was forgiven. In neither case is the initiative human, and in neither case is the human response dispensable. The Christian faith is not a personal discovery that is then communicated; it is a deposit received from others and handed on intact, and holiness is not a merit that accumulates; it is a response that is given.

This has a practical consequence that affects above all those who grow up in a Catholic home and have never drifted away. It is easy to conclude that one owes little. That is exactly Simon’s position, and Luke shows that it is the most dangerous position of all, because it causes no scandal whatsoever and simply dries up the heart little by little. The right question is not how much we have sinned but how much we have been forgiven, and that account includes everything we have been preserved from without ever noticing.

IV. Mary, the one who received much

Here arises an objection that Mariology has faced for centuries and that should not be sidestepped. If the one who has received much forgiveness loves much, and Mary was preserved from all sin, did she love little? The answer of the tradition is the exact opposite, and it rests on the nature of the gift. She did not receive less; she received more, because preservation is a higher form of redemption than healing. One who is kept from falling owes his savior more than one who is lifted up after the fall.

The Council recalls that Mary is redeemed in an especially sublime manner by reason of the merits of her Son and united to Him by a close and indissoluble tie (LG 53), and that she was enriched from the first instant of her conception with the splendor of an entirely unique holiness (LG 56). She is the debtor of the five hundred denarii who never incurred the debt, because someone paid it in advance. That is why her canticle begins where it begins: “my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Lk 1:46-47). She calls Him Savior. She knows what she was saved from.

And there is the gesture of the woman of the city, which the tradition has always read in parallel with that of Mary at Bethany and with the vigil at the foot of the cross. What the sinful woman does with the perfume, Mary did with her whole life, without tears of repentance because she had nothing to repent of, but with the same disproportion. The love that responds to a gift received never keeps accounts, and it always seems excessive to those sitting at the table calculating.

Thursday of the Twenty-Fourth Week therefore leaves a question that is answered in silence. How much do we think we owe? For the measure of our love is already decided in that answer.