NOTES for Luk 7:38

The eccentricity of this behavior can cause confusion. It is impossible to imagine a person in his right mind who voluntarily kneels before someone, and in such a way that it is not even visible, demanding nothing and asking nothing. Not holding back tears and seeing how they accidentally fall on the feet, she wipes them with her hair, then kisses the feet worn by the road and pours very expensive ointment on them. What is this: madness, excessive impressionability? Restraint plays a cruel joke on us. To contain within ourselves the awareness of Christ's God-manhood is difficult. But we also try to defend ourselves from this fact with good manners, common sense, and propriety. It is easier to experience that God is a distant, incomprehensible, all-powerful Lord than to realize that He is both God and Man. If even for one second one understands that it is possible to touch His hand and feel its warmth, then it is impossible to restrain oneself. Here is our God. He is sitting nearby at the table, He is saying something, He is eating, He is tired from the road. He is not somewhere far away in the clouds, amid the shining of light. He is here, at arm's length. It is impossible to refuse the chance to touch Him, but involuntarily you kneel down and kiss His feet.