Today’s gospel passage is famous, exemplifying, as it does,
what is certainly the most popular, and perhaps the best-loved, aspect of
Jesus: His compassionate understanding of our human weakness. Let us learn therefore by taking a closer
look at it.
After having ostentatiously proclaimed the charge against the
adulterous woman, the scribes and Pharisees then asked Jesus to tell them the
best way of dealing with her. Jesus; by
way of response, we are told He then:
Bent down and began to write on
the ground with His finger.
Notice that in His compassion Jesus did not look the woman
straight in the eye; He was not seeking to cause her further embarrassment. He would look her in the eye later when offering
her His saving grace and giving her a final warning.
The main purpose of the scribes and Pharisees, some of whom
were experts of the Law, was to ensnare Jesus in legal technicalities;
He was their principal target, and that is why:
When
they continued asking Him, (Jesus) raised Himself up.
The woman was publicly humiliated; the scribes and
Pharisees, on the other hand, were standing there, spiritually proud and secretly
malicious: Jesus wanted to both knock down their pride and thwart their malice,
and so, standing up and facing them, He said:
He who is without sin
among you, let him first throw a stone at her .
Those erstwhile accusers melted quietly, away one by one,
until Jesus was finally left alone with the woman who was still standing for
all to see, and to her He simply said:
Neither do I condemn
you. Go, and from now on do not sin any
more.
Now, dear friends on
Christ, what is for us the real meaning and significance of Jesus’ actions
here? Recall what the prophet Isaiah
said in our first reading:
See, I am doing something new!
for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for My chosen people
to drink, the people whom I formed for Myself, that they might announce My
praise.
What would this NEW
THING be? The scribes and Pharisees had recognized aright that
the woman taken in adultery was a sinner.
What they did not understand, however, was that this woman’s ‘Law-lessness’,
was a symptom of the sinfulness of the whole of God’s People, from which none
of those present was exempt: she and
they, ‘God’s chosen people’, were still slaves,
not, indeed, to Egypt, but to wilful SIN.
The scribes and Pharisees could not understand what the prophet Isaiah
had foreseen: he had spoken of a new thing, a
new act of God. God’s new act would bring about a new
creation, a new People of God able to sing a new song, expressing
both the beauty and goodness of divine glory and human salvation. How?
Do you remember the Gospel reading just a fortnight
ago? There, Jesus told a parable about a
landowner wanting to cut down an unfruitful tree whilst the gardener pleaded:
Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit
in the future. If not, you can cut it
down.
Jesus knew it would be Himself Who would fertilize the fruitless
tree of God’s planting with His most Precious Blood; and that the orchard tree of
the parable figured the whole root and stock of sinful Adam, represented today by
the adulterous woman, the self-righteous
scribes and Pharisees, and the surrounding crowd of faithless onlookers.
We are now in a position to understand the whole
picture. How could Jesus condemn this
woman for whom He was soon to give His life on the Cross? In fact, it would be easier to save her
because she had just been made aware of and, we trust, ashamed of, her
sinfulness. Jesus was going to give all
sinners, like her, one last chance -- such was the very purpose of His life,
death, and Resurrection: He would loosen the bonds of sin by pouring out His
own Most Precious Blood in sacrifice on Calvary. His final words on both these occasions
have the same significance:
It may bear fruit in the future. If
not, you can cut it down.
Neither do I condemn you; go and sin
no more.
The scribes and Pharisees, refusing to recognize and unwilling
to admit their own sinfulness, thereby made it much more difficult for Jesus to
set them free. For their own sakes, therefore Jesus tried to make them realize
and admit the truth about themselves:
Let the one among you who is
without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.
Many sinners today neither have nor want a clear
understanding or true knowledge of Jesus and His teaching; they are stuffed up
with pride at their supposed ‘human right’ to live as they see fit, and find delight
in their lustful ignorance of God and the reality of sin.
But we, Catholics and Christians, most grateful disciples
of Jesus, must never forget that our God
is a God of both Truth and Beauty; and that, as physical beauty is built
upon the sure basis of a good bone structure, so spiritual beauty calls for a
firm foundation of obedience to God’s will and Christian truth. The Goodness and Holiness of God are likewise
co-ordinated, for His love for us can only be fully realized by calling us
upwards, out of our earthly condition, towards Himself as ‘sharers’ in the
holiness of His Son. He, in no way,
intends to allow us to live for an earthly destiny: Jesus was sent, and He still
intends, to lead His own, with Himself, heavenwards to their Father. Remember what the prophet Isaiah in our
first reading said:
I have formed My chosen people for
Myself that they might announce My praise.
That is indeed our ultimate calling and privilege in
Jesus: to sing the praises of God in heaven for all eternity, in ecstatic joy,
blessed peace, and total fulfilment, with Jesus our saviour, by His most Holy Spirit our most
intimate Guide and ‘other self’, to Him Who is our Father. And so that we ourselves might attain to the Resurrection
from the dead, and live, praising God
for all eternity, Paul tells us:
Forgetting what lies behind but
straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the
prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.
Let us also, aspiring to maturity in and with Christ, adopt this attitude with him, the self-styled ‘unworthy Apostle’, who nevertheless proved to be the greatest sufferer-for-Christ of them all.
