The Fifth Sunday of Lent (C)
Too often in this passage we are quick to ask where the man is with whom the woman committed adultery. Why did the Pharisees not bring him along and condemn him? Why does Jesus not insist on the man being brought before him? With the Pharisees, we are quick to point the finger and to condemn, without considering our own sinfulness. In doing so, we fail to see, to hear, to understand the overwhelming gentleness of Jesus, together with his justice.
“Go, and from now on do not sin anymore,” Jesus says to the woman caught in adultery (John 8:11). As he says to her, so he says to us, “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”
Dear brothers and sisters, is this a fair command the Lord issues to us? We are weak and sinful; wounded by original sin, our intellects are darkened and we have an inclination, a tendency, towards evil that we call concupiscence. Though the stain of original sin has been washed away in baptism, the effects of original sin remain. The Lord knows we are still wounded and weak; how can he tell us to go and sin no more?
Saint Augustine once famously said that each of us is a fomes peccati, a tinderbox of sin. He means to say that it takes but a small spark to ignite the destructive fire of sin within us. Each of us knows what sins we are prone to commit and to which temptations we most easily succumb. We know, if we are honest, what strikes against us and catches fire; we know that are indeed walking tinderboxes of sin.
Considering then this reality of our fallen human nature, we hear again the words of the Lord: “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” We want to keep these words of the Lord, to live without sin, but we are also well aware of our weakness and sinfulness. What then are we to do?
We must not follow the example of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. After cautioning them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her,” Jesus bent down a second time to write on the ground (John 8:7). The one who wrote on the ground with his finger is the very same one who, with his finger, carved the Ten Commandments into those two stone tablets (cf. Exodus 31:18). Seeing his words on the ground, the sins of which each of them were guilty, the Pharisees “went away one by one” and so the woman was left along with Jesus (John 8:9). What a great tragedy! One repentant sinner remained; the unrepentant sinners went away.
Consider, my friends, the great mercy the Lord would have extended to those Pharisees had they, too, remained with the Lord to acknowledge their sinfulness! Pride kept them away; let us, then, be humble and stay with Jesus when he reveals our sins to us in the silence of our hearts.
We must humbly engage in a great spiritual battle to which, by virtue of our baptism, we are summoned. We must continually take up the spiritual weapons of prayer, fasting and alms-giving to turn our hearts ever more away from our own desires and the things of things of this world, and toward the will of the Lord and things of heaven.
Saint Paul knew this battle well. Writing to the Church in Rome, he declared, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Romans 7:19). Each of us knows what he means for the experience is ours, as well. He recognized the necessity to engage actively in this spiritual warfare because he knew what is at stake.
Today he says to us, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (Philippians 3:8-9).
In his encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, Saint Paul found that pearl of great price, that treasure hidden in the field and he would stop at nothing to be taken be taken possession of by Christ.
It is as though prior to his encounter with the Risen Lord, Saint Paul was a fish in the sea, knowing only the things of the waters. But one day – in his encounter with Christ – he was lifted out of the water and saw the rest of the world. Now, back in the water, all of his thoughts and energies are focused on the world above the sea. This is how it must be with each of us!
Dear brothers and sisters, are we also willing to give up all things so as to gain Christ? Have we allowed the Lord Jesus to encounter us on our road? Do we know the prize at stake in this great battle? If not, why are we here this day? Let us, with the Apostle, strain toward what lies ahead that we may attain the goal of life unending in Christ (cf. Philippians 3:11).
In this great battle we are not without hope, for the Lord himself has prepared rest areas for us in which we can regain our strength and fight afresh. It is the Lord himself who “put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink” (Isaiah 43:20). That water, dear friends is Christ; that river is the sacraments he entrusted to the Church.
In these holy days of Lent, the Lord longs to forgive our sins, if only we will humble ourselves and remain with him, seeking his mercy and grace. Let us not stay far from him, but let us approach him in the confessional to know his gentle and merciful love.
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