This is a homily given by Deacon Richard while in Cozumel, Mexico

Good evening and welcome to our Eucharistic celebration on this fifth Sunday in Lent. Today’s readings give us a rich feast for our reflection as we enter these final days on Jesus’ and our journey to Jerusalem and Jesus’ final victory over sin and death.

In our First Reading from Isaiah the tone is set for God’s message to us:

This prophecy written hundreds of years before Christ, is the promise that God will make all things new in Jesus. What was this new thing? For hundreds of years the Jewish people defined their covenant with God in the terms of the Mosaic law. But over the years the meaning of the law became perverted into blind adherence to multiple accretions to the law, burdens placed on the peasants by the religious authorities. To be righteous, to have a life conforming to God’s will, meant slavish obedience to the hundreds of prescriptions the Scribes and Pharisees had added to the law with their interpretations. The poor peasants in Galilee and Judaea had no hope of understanding the law, never mind obeying it. Thus they had no hope, no expectation of better times, but were doomed not to be righteous before God.

Jesus respected the Law. We see this in Matthew 5:17-18: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. “But, Jesus understood that at the heart of God’s law was divine mercy, unconditional love and forgiveness. “...for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people…” The Latin word for mercy is misericordia derived from two words, miser and cordia, miser=the poor, the oppressed and cordia=heart. In other words, a heart, a presence, a concern for the poor.

Humankind’s temptation is to hide behind the law. We can even believe that we can achieve righteousness by adhering to the law ourselves (of course, then we do not need a Redeemer). The further danger is that we use the law to judge others implying that we are above those whom we judge, innocent while they are guilty. This is what we mean by prejudice. Remember the story of the Pharisee and the publican. “The Pharisee stood apart by himself and prayed, ‘I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest or an adulterer like everybody else I thank you that I am not like that publican, that tax collector over there.’” (Luke 18:11). St. Paul recognized how easy it is to misuse the law. He had spent his life zealously protecting the Mosaic law even to the point of being present at Stephen’s stoning. After his conversion Paul recognized his folly.  He gives up everything “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God base on faith.” (Second Reading)

Let us keep all this in mind as we turn now to our Gospel, the woman caught in adultery recorded only in John’s Gospel.  The Gospel begins with Jesus going to the Mount of Olives and then coming to the temple to teach. We should not pass over this reference to the Mount of Olives as it connects Jesus’ merciful judgment on this poor woman and his own suffering and death. The Passion narrative begins after the Last Supper on the Mount of Olives. “I tell you, I will never again drink this wine until the day I drink new wine with you in my Father’s Kingdom. Then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives.” Jesus is sitting in one of the porticoes of the Temple teaching the ordinary people. What was he teaching that day? We do not know; perhaps he was telling them of his Father’s mercy. The scribes and Pharisees by this time we're doing all they could to find grounds with which to condemn Jesus. He was too threatening to them, undermining their understanding of the Mosaic law. They want to trap him and bring a woman caught in adultery to him, reminding him that the Mosaic law demanded that she be executed by stoning. “They said this to test Jesus, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.” One only can wonder where was her partner, the man caught in adultery but then as now with Sharia law, it is the woman who is punished and rarely the man. There is a famous film on YouTube documenting the story of a poor woman condemned for adultery and stoned to death in Iran. She was a married woman who attempted to help a recently widowed man with a young son in her village with some housekeeping. She was wrongly accused of adultery with him and stoned while the man was never accused.

We might miss the illusion when Jesus bends down and writes with his finger on the ground. The allusion is in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus is accused of casting out demons through the power of Beelzebub. Jesus responds, “But if it is by the finger of God, that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20). Then Jesus says, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Then He is left alone with the woman.  Every stance we take is hypocritical when we judge another because none of us is without sin, none of us without the need for God’s mercy. As St. Philip Neri is reported as saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Jesus escapes the trap of the Pharisees. He does not deny the Mosaic law. He does not condone the adultery. He condemns the sin but not the sinner. He only asks for contrition and repentance, a change of life. “Neither do I condemn you...and from now on do not sin again.”

Pope Francis, as you know, has declared this a Jubilee year, the Year of divine Mercy. In his book, The Name of God is Mercy, he reminds us of our need for personally encountering that mercy in the sacrament of reconciliation which seems to have fallen away from the practice of our faith. By acknowledging our guilt in confession, we experience the life-giving grace of mercy. “The Church fathers teach us that a shattered heart is the most pleasing gift to God.  It is a sign that we are conscious of our sins, of the evil we have done, of our wretchedness, and of our need for forgiveness and mercy.” We need to hear the words Jesus addressed to the poor woman in today’s Gospel. “Neither do I condemn you...go and sin no more.”

A little story I heard explains God’s mercy. There was a young priest who had a woman in his parish claiming to have visions of Christ. She constantly assailed him after Mass with descriptions of her visions of Jesus. He was somewhat sceptical and decided to test her. He said, ‘the next time you see Christ in one of your visions, ask him to tell you what sin I committed when I was in high school.’  The next day, the woman came to him all excited. ‘I spoke with Jesus and asked your question.’ ‘What was his response’, asked the sceptical priest? ‘Jesus said he forgot.’