Fr Leslie Miranda
| | JUDGE NOT AND YOU WILL NOT BE JUDGED | | Is 43:16-21 Phil 3:8-14 Jn 8:1-11 | | March,21 | | 5th Sunday of Lent | Today’s Gospel passage has been subject to extensive controversy, its style being Lucan and not Johanine. Words like Scribes and Pharisees are found in Luke, not in John. It is sufficient for us that the passage was accepted by the Church as canonical, and that lifts it from oblivion. Incidentally, the woman’s meeting with Christ saves her from oblivion. The Old Law had marked her for death. The New Law remade and regenerated her to a new life. May we, like her, receive the gift of a new life in Christ.
The Gospel places before us two main characters. To use St Augustine’s language, they are Mercy and Misery. Mercy is God’s name. Christ is Mercy made incarnate. Misery, the unnamed woman, stands for every sinner, you and me. Our role in today’s Gospel is played by a woman. We |
| know nothing about her background. Had she been having a longstanding affair? Was it a sudden act of aroused passion? Was she caught because she was neither shrewd nor clever enough to sin, without being seen in action? Was her husband the one who laid the trap for her to get rid of her? We have no details except that she was caught committing adultery. The mystery is that her partner in the affair escaped. How did he escape? This is how the world goes on; one is caught, the other escapes.
The world of prominent citizens caught the adulteress. How did they manage it? Their perversity cannot escape our imagination. Were they serious upholders of the law? If so, how did they allow her partner to escape? Maybe he too was too prominent a citizen to be apprehended.
The Scribes and the Pharisees looked on the woman ...Contd. | | |
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