Whenever the religious leaders come to Jesus to ask him a question in the Gospels, they are setting a trap for him. They present him with a situation where no matter how he answers, he is bound to give a response that they can use against him. In the case of the woman caught in adultery, the penalty prescribed by the Mosaic Law was death by stoning. If Jesus tells them not to stone the woman, they can accuse him of breaking the law. If he tells them to proceed with the execution, they can claim that his message of mercy was hollow and meaningless.
In each of the traps set by the religious leaders of his time, Jesus deflects the attack by responding in an altogether different way from what his antagonists are expecting. In the situation involving the woman caught in adultery, Jesus replies by exposing the hypocrisy of the men seeking judgment against her.
The men have brought only the woman for judgment. However, she was caught in the very act of adultery, so the accusers would know the man she had sinned with as well. He too would be bound by the same penalty according to the law. But they are not seeking to have him be killed by stoning.
The behavior of the accusers highlights a deep double standard in the broader culture at the time of Jesus, a double standard that we find in most cultures historically. Women were held to a strict standard of sexual morality, but men were given a great deal of license, even when they were breaking the moral code. Modern society has dealt with the double standard by giving women license too. But Jesus challenged the hypocrisy by calling men to the same strict observance of moral precepts that women were expected to follow.
In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, Jesus challenges the men to look inside their own hearts. They are ready to impose the worst kind of punishment on the woman - but what of their own souls? Are they pure? Are they free of sin? Or have they themselves violated the moral code, taking advantage of the license given to men in their own culture. Jesus is not excusing the sin of the woman. But he challenges the men to reflect on whether or not they are guilty of sins before meting out judgment, especially sins for which they are willing to kill another member of their community.
The men get the point. Unable to claim the moral high ground, the slink away one by one. Next we have the famous exchange between Jesus and the sinful woman: “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.’” (John 8:10-11)
The passage highlights a fundamental difference between how Jesus showed compassion and how modern society tends to do. Our contemporary secular society claims to treat dysfunctional, self-destructive behavior with compassion by encouraging complete acceptance. But that acceptance usually means that the person in question is left stuck in their self-destructive mode of being.
Jesus, by contrast, shows compassion to the sinful woman, and as a part of doing so, he also challenges her to change. He treats her with love and he invites her to leave her sin behind and start leading a spiritually healthy life. Compassion without the challenge to leave our brokenness behind is no compassion at all. True compassion means helping us to rise above our dysfunction and to embrace the healing power of God in our lives.
While we are still alive in this world, we have a chance to repent and change. Christ will forgive any sin as long as we turn to him with a contrite heart. But if we refuse to be changed by him, we block out his forgiveness in our lives - we block out his love.
As the First and Second Readings show, God can purify us, transform us, and remake us completely, no matter our past, no matter how deeply we were mired in sin before. He can cleanse us fully and make us new. No matter where we are in our lives, all we have to do is cry out for his mercy and accept his love. Therefore, let us repent. Let us accept Christ's infinite love, which he pours out to us through the Sacraments of Holy Mother Church.
But, we might say, what about the hurt that we have caused other people in the past through our sin? Even if our guilt is erased, the damage we have done to others lives on. What can we do to rectify the past?
On the one hand, we should not just forget about what we had done, as if nothing had happened. On the other hand, we must not allow the memories of past sins to torment us, which can cause us to turn away from God's love altogether. Instead, we should acknowledge our past sins and at the same time have faith that God can heal those situations as well, just as he had given us healing.
We should also do all we can on our part to bring about the healing of those we hurt. Sometimes, we can do so only from a distance because the relationship is so broken. We should then pray ceaselessly for the people we had hurt. We should fast for them. We should offer up our suffering for them, whether it is suffering that is visited upon us by life or suffering that arises from sacrifices we make.
An important aspect of Catholic spirituality is the tenet that suffering has spiritual value. When we suffer, we can offer up the spiritual value of our suffering for others for their healing. In particular, if the people we had hurt had hurt us too, we should offer up for them the suffering they had caused us. Christ himself set the example. He himself was sinless and had hurt no one but he suffered on the Cross because of the sinfulness of all of humanity. He responded by offering his suffering up for the spiritual healing of the whole human race. Thus, offering up our suffering for those who have hurt us is the most Christ-like thing we can do.
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The readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Cycle C, are:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6
Philippians 3:8-14
John 8:1-11
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery by Guercino from Wikimedia Commons.
