João 12
Bernard of Clairvaux
João 12:3
However, if we say that this invisible and spiritual ointment was symbolized by the visible ointment with which the sinful woman, as the Gospel describes, visibly anointed the corporeal feet of God, we cannot regard it as entirely worthless. For what do we read in the Gospel? "The house," it says, "was full of the scent of the ointment." It trickled from the hands of a courtesan, pouring over the feet, the body's extremities; and yet it was not so paltry, not so contemptible, as to prevent the house's being filled with the power of its aroma, the sweetness of its scent. So if we consider how great the fragrance with which the Church is perfumed in the conversion of one sinner, what a sweet smell of life leading to life each penitent can become! Provided that his repentance is wholehearted and visible to all, may we not with equal assurance say of him: "The house was full of the scent of the ointment." We can even say that this perfume of repentance reaches to the very abodes of the blessed in heaven because we have the witness of Truth itself that there is rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner. — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 10
João 12:25
For what else sounded to you from the lecture hall of Christ, when just a little while ago it was proclaimed: "He who loves his soul shall lose it"? (Jn 12:25.) "He shall lose it," he said, whether by laying it down as a martyr, or by afflicting it as a penitent. Although it is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit; milder indeed in horror than that in which the limbs are cut by the sword, but more troublesome by reason of its duration. Do you see that by this judgment of my Master the wisdom of the flesh is condemned, through which either one flows away into the excess of pleasure, or even a good state of bodily health is desired beyond what is fitting? Indeed, that true wisdom does not flow out into pleasures, you have heard from the Wise Man, that it is "not even to be found in the land of those who live pleasantly" (Job 28:13). But he who found it says: "Beyond health and all beauty I loved wisdom" (Wis 7:10). If beyond health and beauty, how much more beyond pleasure and baseness? — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 30