Fifth Sunday of Lent
Neither I condemn you: you go
Jesus …. early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him …. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more.” .. Jn 8,1-11
The today passage can be considered as the paradigm of the gospel: the meeting between the sin of the man and the mercy of God. Jesus of Nazareth announces and transmits the love of the Father and the sinners welcome it because they are thirsty of it: each man needs to be forgiven to regain a positive image of himself. The joy of Matthew comes back to the mind, when Jesus called him to be followed as well as the joyful banquet in his house, with the attendance of the Master being the scribes and the Pharisees highly disappointed. The scene is the same in the today passage: Jesus forgives this woman brought in front of him to be condemned. We too, as the adulterous woman, betray continuously the Bridegroom sent to us by the Father, but he is always available to forgive us if we, as the prodigal son of the famous parable, reform ourselves and we return back to him. Moreover, to the purpose to have always available his forgiveness, he has instituted for us the sacrament of the Reconciliation, or Confession, whichever the definition could be. Unfortunately, however, this sacrament which deletes our sin has a unilateral effect: in the heaven the forgiveness is always thereby, but we are not able to behave in the same way in our life. The others – the public opinion – are not the only ones to stone us: also our conscience continuously stones us, not allowing us to welcome in its totality the love of God. This is the source of several psychical diseases, originated by a negative vision of ourselves, which psychologists and psychiatrists try to fight, with poor results and considerable expenses for the patients. The forgiveness is the real therapy for these disturbances of the mind and of the heart, but it is not easy to reach it, because God always forgives, but we forgive ourselves sometime and the world never forgives: an adulterous woman remains always an adulterous woman and a thief remains always a thief. The only thing which we can do, to get out from this jail, is to pray the Lord to obtain a full consciousness of his love, such to heal the consequences of the lack of forgiveness, either of the one which we are not able to provide us, either of the one which is refused by the others. Let’s us become aware, Lord, of the power of your gratuitous love, which does not ask for nothing other than to be able to love and to forgive.