P. Daniel Antonio de Carvalho Ribeiro, SCJ
This Sunday’s Gospel presents us with the story of the repentant adulterous woman. In view of the gravity of this sin, according to Jewish law this woman should be stoned. However, according to the Roman laws in force in the Israelite colony, only the Empire, through its local representative, had the authority to condemn someone to death. This prevented the Jews from applying the law of Moses. Knowing this, the Pharisees try to put Jesus at a crossroads: when questioned, if Jesus said they could stone her, the Romans would condemn Him; if He said that they should not stone her, He would contravene religious law.
Faced with the trap created by the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus asks those who had not sinned to throw the first stone and, after writing something indecipherable on the ground, everyone ends up moving away, leaving Jesus alone with that woman. Contrary to wanting to unveil what was written, St. Augustine focuses on the meaning of that message and comments that at that moment only human misery, represented by repentant adulthood, and divine mercy, visible in Christ, remained. This teaches us that the beauty of mercy must be celebrated without forgetting the gravity and the need for reparation for sin.
Jesus’ great act of mercy does not deny the seriousness of that woman’s act of adultery. There is a tendency to use the Gospel to justify and normalize behaviors contrary to divine law as being natural. It is common to hear that God is love, welcomes everyone and has not excluded anyone. Which is true, but we cannot forget that God’s mercy presupposes repentance and the desire of the person not to commit the same sin again. Sin does not gain a new dimension here in this Gospel, it remains the death of divine life in the human soul. Just as a lamp cannot illuminate when its wires are cut off from the electric current, a soul in mortal sin is cut off from the grace of God. The gravity of sin and our redemption needed a remedy that we received with Jesus’ death on the cross.
When the Church, faithful to Sacred Scripture, says, for example, that a person cannot receive Communion in mortal sin, she does not want to exclude anyone, she only teaches that before we receive Communion, we have a serious situation created by our wrongdoing that we need to resolve. There is a divine pedagogy in this teaching. This deprivation of Communion is not a punishment or exclusion of people who have failed, but a warning from a Mother who knows that her child cannot continue in that situation. As we live in a society of material tendency and immense polarizations, we usually ignore this spiritual truth and ignoring that the soul should live in the grace of God.
It is also worth mentioning the process of conversion of the sinful women. She sinned grievously, repented, received divine forgiveness, and was warned not to sin again. This is how it should happen in our lives every time we commit sin. In these last weeks of Lent we must reflect on our state before God. The encounter between sin and divine mercy always passes through our repentance and the desire not to sin again. In order for the medicine for our salvation, which cost Christ death on the cross, to be applied in our lives, Jesus left the sacrament of reconciliation. The Church classifies this sacrament, like the Anointing of the Sick, as a Sacrament of Healing. He heals our soul of everything that takes us away from God. Knowing the importance of this sacrament for our salvation, the Church asks us to go to confession at least once a year, exactly at this time of year, to participate in Easter in a state of grace. This reconciliation with God, so important in order to live in peace, it will have its fullness in the application of the mercy received from the Lord in our relationship with our brothers and sisters, especially those who have sinned against us.
I invite you to a personal reflection and to entrust yourselves into the loving arms of God, in an embrace of reconciliation. He is waiting for us with a loving and merciful forgiveness. Do not have and never doubt the mercy of God.
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