Isaiah 43:16-21/Ps.126/Phil 3:8-14/ John 8:1-11
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Fr. Daniel Evbotokhai
GOD’S MERCY
Today’s gospel presents us with the story of the woman caught in the very act of adultery. This story illustrates the surprising nature of God’s mercy. Last Sunday the Prodigal son was received back home; today, the woman caught in adultery was forgiven; we too are equally shown mercy for the sins we commit. God does not condone sins neither does he condemn sinners. He patience is for our good and salvation. Therefore, we must guide against abuses. Below are the various ways we can show that we value the mercy of God:
Do not condemn others: These men had pick up stones only to realize that they are equally guilty. Where is the man? Are men free from the sin of adultery? Beloved, throw no stones. The stones you throw today may be lifted against you at judgment. One of the well-known scriptural verses is John 3:16 “for God ….” And verse 17 says “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him”. From the beginning of time, God consistently and persistently communicates a driving desire to save us. Ezekiel says in 18:23 God is not interested in the death of a sinner rather let him turn from his evil ways and live. Jesus executed that same judgment saying “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and sin no more”. Again, in Luke 6:37 Jesus says; “…do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Do not be quick to condemn people. You may just be worse than those you condemn.
While still on earth and in the flesh, to condemn anyone is a sin against hope. The sin of despair – it is only despair that says a person is beyond repair. Despair believes that one’s evil is beyond God’s forgiveness. Most times in our journey from earth to heaven what matters most is not how we begin but how we end. We need to say with utmost conviction that no matter what my past has been, I can begin anew. The First reading says, behold I am doing a new thing; I want to make a way for you in the wilderness and bring water to your desert. Beloved, begin anew. Let us make amends before our end.
Evil deeds will be uncovered: The woman probably would have thought no one would uncover her deeds. The Scribes and Pharisees would have equally thought that their tactics against Jesus would not be uncovered. Over the years many people have made similar assumptions; not only in committing adultery and evil conspiracy, but in telling lies, manipulating figures, collecting bribes and the likes. The truth is that you can deceive others but you cannot deceive God. Gal.6:7 “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Num. 32:23 says, be sure that your sin will find you out. Beloved in Christ do not wait to be caught before you cut out from that sinful relationship. ‘…you may cover your sins that nobody may know; you cannot hide it from God’.
Self-examination: In the Gospel Jesus did not initially respond to their question but remains silent. Why? John Paul II whom by providence we mark his 17th death anniversary today; got this to say about the Lord’s silence in this gospel. He says; “By his silence Jesus invites everyone to self-reflection.” He invites the woman to acknowledge the wrong committed and his accuser to an examination of conscience. Examination of conscience is a review of one’s past thoughts, words, actions, and omissions for the purpose of ascertaining their conformity with, or deviation from, the moral law. This is done with a firm purpose of amendment. After the examination of conscience the Pharisees and the woman realized that they have all sinned. 1John1:8 says, if we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and truth has no place in us. Therefore, the Church invites us to daily examination of conscience that we may be humbled by our sins and ask for mercy. Do not be blinded by self-righteousness; marking others guilt and forgetting your own failures before God.
Sin no more: Jesus says to the woman “Go, and do not sin again.” Jesus did not condemn the woman neither did he condone her sins. “Go, and sin no more” means that we should repent. We were not told that the prodigal son went back to a distant land again. Jesus did not only call this woman’s action a sin, but equally told her not to repeat it. Repetition of sins deliberately results to ‘Obstinacy in sin’. This is one of the six sins against the Holy Spirit. Obstinacy in sin, is the willful persistence in wickedness, and running on from sin to sin, after sufficient instructions and admonition. Beloved in Christ, let us avoid repeating sins. “Go, and sin no more” means we should make effort to avoid the occasions of sins; places, persons, habits etc. Obstinacy can be forgiven, like all sins, but only once it ceases. Again, don’t glory in sin and say I will go to confession afterwards. Even though you go to confession you deny yourself forgiveness because the Church teaches that the fundamental condition for receiving forgiveness is repentance founded on supernatural love for God, sometimes called perfect contrition. When repentance is based on something less we deny ourselves forgiveness.
Beloved, what is it that has kept you in bondage these years? What is that sin that has been your burden, what is that habit that wants to disgrace you, what is that sin that has kept you in the desert, and left you in the wilderness? Lent is a second chance. God’s mercy is bigger than your sins; God’s mercy is a surprise to a sinner. Come and be saved.
PRAYER
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, you Son handed himself over to death. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. AMEN.
Fr Galadima Bitrus, (OSA)
GOD, DOING NEW WONDERS
Introduction
On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, the Liturgy proposes for our meditation, readings that encourage us to look up to the new ways God wants to relate with us, especially as we approach the Holy Week which culminates in the celebration of the feast of new life per excellence, Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection.
Summary of Main Points of the Readings
In the first reading, the Lord encourages us to let go former and old things and to behold the new things he is about to accomplish. In the second reading, Paul shares a Christian habit he has developed of forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, since the goal is always ahead, never behind. Similarly, the Gospel shows us a new way God relates with sinners: not as a policeman waiting to catch us doing wrong and eager to punish us, but as a father who delights in forgiving our past mistakes and misguided actions, and eagerly looks forward to seeing us acquire a new consciousness and a transformed mentality.
Interpretation of Readings
1st Reading (Isa 43:16-21): The Lord is introduced in terms that call to mind the way he acted wondrously at the Exodus from Egypt, thus, as “the one who made a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters; who destroyed chariots and horses and all the mighty armies…” (43:16-17).
Yet, he calls upon the Israelites not to limit their imagination of what God can do only in accordance with their past experience of him as Lord over the seas and the great armies. Therefore, he exhorted: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing” (43:18-19a).
The new thing God is doing shall reveal the Lord in accordance to the present circumstances of his people and not limited to any past way of doing things. Now that the people are under the threat of desert life, the Lord pledges to perform new and corresponding wonders of liberation: “I will make a road through the wilderness and rivers in the desert…to give drink to my chosen people….” (43:19b-21).
Lesson 1: We can be confident in our everyday relationship with the Lord, knowing that God who worked great things that made us glad, as the Psalmist proclaims, is able to perform in our present circumstances, new and even greater deeds.
2nd Reading (Phil 3:8-14): In the light of his new life which has come from knowledge of Christ, Paul looks back on his former life, the things he possessed and the things he pursued, and discovers their relative value, considering everything as loss (zēmían). On account of his knowledge of Christ, he suffered the loss of everything he had built his life around, but which he now understands to be refuse or rubbish (skúbala), including the thought that he could achieve righteousness by his observance of the law (Phil 3:8-9).
Now he understands that righteousness comes only from God through faith in Christ, and faith in Christ comes from knowing him and the power of his resurrection and requires us to associate our suffering with the suffering of Christ and conform to his death in order to attain resurrection from the dead with him (Phil 3:10-11). As Paul affirmed elsewhere, “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom 6:8; cf. 2 Tim 2:11).This new life, for Paul, is not a goal reached once for all, but something to press on continuously to make one’s own (Phil 3:12). As he declared: “I do not consider that I have made it my own, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).
Lesson 2: New life in Christ implies not holding unto our former and past ways but acquiring a new mentality and be transformed into the person of Christ, and this is not something achieved once and for all but consists in developing a habit of opening ourselves to God’s new ways of relating with humanity.
Gospel Reading (Jn 8:1-11): Jesus shows us a totally new way of relating with sinners. He does not just pull out already made formulas of dealing with the issue of the woman caught in adultery but considers it in more careful and profound ways.
While the scribes and Pharisees who brought the woman to Jesus were quick to refer to the Mosaic provision that an adulteress be stoned to death (cf. Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22, where the same punishment is also prescribed for the adulterer), Jesus first bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground before responding to the scribes and pharisees, and will also do same before speaking directly to the woman (Jn 8:6b, 8).
Writing has always been a useful way of organizing our thought and affords us to appraise its quality more clearly. That Jesus wrote before making known his (dis)position both to the scribes and pharisees who had brought the woman before him and to the woman herself, seems to portray Jesus’ verdict as something well considered and deeply meditated.
Thus, Jesus’ judgment was not simply to satisfy the woman’s accusers nor acquit the woman, nor even to demonstrate his faithfulness to the constitution (the Torah). His judgement rather targeted the hearts of both the accusers and the accused, and even anyone who may have been just a bystander, requiring all to self-interrogate, self-examine, and undergo a journey of personal conversion.
Therefore, to the accusers he said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (Jn 8:7) and to the accused woman he said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again” (Jn 8:11).
Lesson 3: In Jesus’ response to the scribes and pharisees, we learn to interrogate ourselves before passing any verdict on anyone else. This formula, even if it doesn’t make us merciful, it will at least rekindle in us the consciousness of our shared fragility, the awareness that we all live in glass houses and must, therefore, not be eager to throw stones at anyone. Above all, it reminds us that we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) and therefore, all need the gift of God’s sanctifying grace “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24).
May God heal our hearts and our world! Have a blessed week!
Fr. Paul K. Oredipe
Go and sin NO MORE – The Power of LOVE
“Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
Brothers and sisters, the forgiveness of God brings a freshness and newness that we cannot but experience and appreciate.
John Cardinal Henry Newman was actually right with the text of that hymn: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saves a wretch like me.
In Isaiah 1:18 God says to the people: “Come, let us talk this over, says Yahweh. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
The freshness and newness of the mercy of God is foreshadowed in today’s Old Testament reading where we hear the prophet Isaiah proclaiming one of his favourite themes: a new Exodus.
In the first Exodus, God brought His people out of slavery in Egypt, leading them through the desert into the promised land. Isaiah speaks again of the desert, and prophesies a further wonder. “See, I am doing a new deed.” In the Second Exodus, the Lord will transform the desert itself. He will flood it with water, transforming it into an oasis of refreshment.
The Church has put this passage alongside today’s gospel reading to help us to understand its deeper significance. Through Isaiah God makes this promise: “I am putting waters in the wilderness to give my chosen people drink. The people I have formed for myself will sing my praises.”
The Gospel passage itself is a very well-known story. Its popularity is for two reasons. First, because it concerns a sexual sin, which for many people is the most difficult kind of sin. Secondly, because it shows the greatness of Divine Mercy. We need to see this Gospel in the light of the Old Testament reading, to understand how it is that Christ changes the wilderness of sin; how He reveals that it is no longer through obedience to the Law of Moses that His people will find salvation. The first point to notice is that He does not abrogate the Law.
In this Gospel episode, the primary concern of the Pharisees is to discredit Jesus and thereby secure their own reputation as the religious authority. It was a question of getting at Jesus through the woman. The Pharisees are using her as a tool in their effort to cause trouble for Jesus. One might also ask: can one commit adultery alone? Where was the man with whom the adultery was committed? Why was he not caught and also brought forward?
Christ Our Lord is the God of surprises. He did not do what they expected. First, He looked down to the earth and doodled in it with His fingers, reminding us that all of us are sinners; for dust is the origin and destiny of our bodies. Jesus does not write our sins on rock to remain forever, but on dust, to be blown away by the mercy of God, who does not snuff out the smouldering wick or beat the bruised reed.
Jesus invited the woman’s accusers to judge her themselves in the light of their own consciences. And because they all recognized their own sinfulness, they are forced to withdraw. He accepted their judgement. He alone is without sin, and so would have been justified in casting the first stone. But instead of the law of punishment, He writes a new law in the sand -the desert- of human hearts: “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you.” This is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy; the transposition of the Law of Moses into the new law of MERCY. “Go and sin no more.”
As followers of Christ, we have a lot to learn from Jesus’ approach to the adulterous woman. We must avoid a correction that belittles our fellow human beings because we ourselves are not completely free from all these errors. We are all sinners. Not a single one of us is without sin (cf. 1 John 1:8). How can we then, who are sinners ourselves and in need of God’s mercy, turn round to condemn and deny others the same mercy of God? We simply lack the moral standing to do so.
Therefore, we should not be quick to condemn others. We should realize that we are all sinners and all in need of God’s mercy. Though there surely are times to correct another, we should do that in kindness and with love and compassion. Let us learn from the example of Jesus not to condemn.
It is true that the more base and corrupt a man, the more ready he is to charge crimes to others. God is telling us today not to be fault-finders but fault-menders. Let us always bear it in mind that ‘the best way to dispelling darkness is not by cursing it but by lightning a candle.’
We can only understand the greatness, freshness and newness of the mercy of God in the Gospel story when we realize and appreciate the immense value and treasure that we are before God. Why does God not want the death of a sinner? Why does He want him or her to repent and live? Why does Jesus not condemn the woman? Surely, the worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know but WHO we are.”
Jesus does not condone the woman. Instead, He forgives her. Under the Law, adultery was a capital offence, punishable by death, because of the seriousness of such a sin. That seriousness has not changed. In fact, every abandonment of God is a kind of adultery, which wounds a caring and loving God. Someone once described sin as ‘following the stranger’.
The Law does not condemn us. We condemn ourselves, if we commit such a sin, and fail to repent. Repentance changes everything. Repentance means that the Lord will transform the desert of our lives, with the power of His life-giving Cross.
The woman found mercy and love right then and there – not a promise of something in the future. If she had been in anguish in guilt, she would have missed that moment of mercy and love. If she had been making all kinds of promises and resolutions about the future, she would have missed that moment of mercy and love. But, she was focused on the moment, focused on Jesus standing with her.
It is a wonderful image of prayer – she is attentive, focused, present to the moment; she is waiting for what the Lord will say or do. But, it is also a wonderful lesson for living – the past is done; the future may hold promise and excite us – but the time God gives is NOW. “Now is the acceptable time; this is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2)
Isaiah, in our First Reading of today, had it right. “No need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before. See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can you not see it?” In the Second Reading, Paul writing to the Philippians, says about himself: “I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is yet to come”. We will never perceive what God is doing unless we are attentive and present to the moment, kind of taking each day at a time and knowing how special each day can be. It is wonderful to have memories of special times in the past. It is exciting to dream dreams of what can be in the future. But the most special moment is the NOW.
If we allow God to take care of our past, we will feel like the Jews. As the Responsorial Psalm of today puts it: “When the Lord delivered Zion (us) from bondage (of sin and shame, as in the adulterous woman, and consequently all of us), it seemed like a dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, on our lips there were songs”.
Each of us has our own unique flaws. We are all cracked pots. Do not be afraid of your flaws. Acknowledge them, and you too can be the cause of beauty. Know that in our weakness we find our strength.
Until we see ourselves and tell ourselves about ourselves, our real selves, strengths and weaknesses, there cannot be real peace of mind. As the saying goes: “There is so much evil in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us”. Indeed, each of us is a combination of good and evil. Each and every one of us is a mix – good and bad – and that is the person the Lord loves right now. That is part of what it means to be a unique and distinct individual in God’s sight.
We need to see ourselves as God sees us. We are not yet the complete, beautifully fulfilled human beings God created us to be. We are all on the same journey toward fulfillment. None of us has reached the state of human perfection. In this sense, we all are defective or, in the Biblical sense, sinners. Not only must we see ourselves in this light, but also others – all others.
“Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus loves us for who we are right now. Even now, as imperfect, unfinished, sinful women and men, we are of infinite worth in the sight of God: you and I and every other human creation of God, without exception. “Judge not! Let the man among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone at her.”
No greater thing can be said of Jesus than that He uttered the true heart of all mankind. At the bottom line is love, and that means understanding … compassion … mercy … forgiveness.
Today, on the fifth Sunday of Lent, the shadow of the Passion is already looming. The Cross is coming into view. Today’s Gospel is above all a reminder of the fruits of the Cross, Divine Mercy. This is the new law by which Christ judges an adulterous world, the law of love. The Precious Blood which flows from the Cross will flow into our wilderness and transform it.
Let us come back to God today. Though we have derailed, God is giving us another chance like the adulterous woman. Let us retrace our route back to God. Jesus is telling us, like He told the adulterous woman, “I have not condemned you, go and SIN NO MORE.
If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart. Today is the day of salvation.
Song:
‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saves a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I am found. Was blind, but now I see. . . . It was grace that brought me safe thus far; and grace will lead me home’
