Patristic A.D. 378
“As if He said, To provide water is easy, to pour forth tears is not easy. Thou hast not provided even what was at hand, she hath poured forth what was not at hand; for washing my feet with her tears, she washed away her own stains. She wiped them with her hair, that so she might draw to herself the sacred moisture, and by that by which she once enticed youth to sin, might now attract to herself holiness.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of Luke, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on Luke 7:36-50
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1843) ↗