My Dear People,

We as Catholics get challenged on occasion by those who do not know the Catholic Faith or want to know the Catholic Faith. There are many who have determined that they are right, and the Catholics are wrong. What they challenge the Catholics on is based on misconceptions of the Catholic Faith, based on anti-Catholic propaganda. The fact that many Catholics cannot answer the questions is because they do not know the Catholic Faith, and they are dissuaded by people who hate the Catholic Church. It is not easy when being challenged. In today’s gospel, we see a challenge that Jesus faces and how he answers it. Jesus is not caught in the trap they lay for him. Neither should we when challenged about our faith. 

The  scribes and the Pharisees have contrived the whole event as a political trap for Jesus. We notice immediately that there is something fishy about the event because they bring this woman “caught in adultery,” but the man involved is nowhere to be found even though the Law of Moses would hold him equally responsible. Where is the man if they caught the woman “in the very act”? Possibly this woman is just a paid actor, although we don’t know. 

In any event, this is the nature of the trap: If Jesus responds by telling the scribes and the Pharisees that they should stone the woman, the scribes and Pharisees will immediately run to the Roman authorities and report Jesus as advocating rebellion against the Roman government and its laws, since the Roman government reserved to itself  alone the authority to apply capital punishment. No other group or persons in the empire had the power of execution, and to advocate or attempt the execution of someone outside of Roman authorization would be interpreted as an act of sedition. 

On the other hand, if Jesus responds by telling the scribes and Pharisees not to execute the woman, they will report to the people, “this man Jesus is not a true prophet because he defies the law of Moses!” Thus, they will succeed in getting Jesus arrested or else discrediting him in the eyes of pious Jews. 

Jesus knows this is a trap, so he refuses to respond. When they keep pressing him, he offers this suggestion: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

By saying this, Jesus puts the responsibility for the woman’s execution squarely on the shoulders of the scribes and Pharisees. They certainly do think that they themselves are without sin, but they do not dare take up a stone to throw at the woman because they would immediately be arrested by the Roman soldiers who were keeping an eye on the temple courts from the massive adjacent Antonian fortress. The whole proceedings were probably being watched by soldiers from the parapet of the fortress, which Tome had built precisely for keeping peace in this most volatile area of Jerusalem. 

So now Jesus has turned the trap on the Pharisees. If they throw stones, they will be arrested by the Romans. If they don’t throw stones, they will appear to be admitting that they are sinners. In the end, they choose the shame of being outwitted in public rather than being arrested, tortured, and incarcerated by the Roma authorities. The oldest and wisest are the first to figure out that Jesus has outwitted them, the youngest and most foolish keep hanging around, hoping there is some way out of their “checkmate.” Do not think for a moment that their decision not to throw stones was actually some kind of sincere conviction in their hearts that they truly were sinners in need of forgiveness! Certainly not! They just didn’t want to be arrested. 

When they’ve all left, Jesus asks the woman, “Has no one condemned you?” And she responds, “not one, sir.” None of the accusers had been willing to sustain the accusation themselves, so, from a legal perspective, there were no longer any plaintiffs. And how can a judge condemn a defendant if there are no plaintiffs? So, Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”

If the woman had really committed adultery then, Jesus exhorts her to do so no longer. But even if she was a paid actor, it was a sin to cooperate with the Pharisees in the effort to entrap an innocent man, and she needs to repent of that sin. 

In none of this does Jesus relax in the least his teaching on sexual purity. Jesus has the highest standards of sexual propriety, forbidding not just adultery but even the internal lust that is the seed of adultery, and that, if necessary we should be willing even to maim ourselves if such actions will free us from sin (Matt 5:28-30). So, in Our Lord we see the paradox of unyielding teaching about the way of holiness combined with an inexhaustible willingness to forgive, heal, and restore (see Matt 18:22).

In the context of this Mass, this Gospel Reading gives comfort to those many of us who have botched or messed up our Lenten practices or even abandoned them and gone back to a self-indulgent lifestyle in small or large ways. The Lord is even forgiving. He does not condemn but encourages us to “go and from now on do not sin anymore.” Yet he does not lie to us by telling us we can attain eternal life while indulging in sin. The Lord never tells us an untruth. Since salvation is by definition an “exodus” or freedom from sin, we cannot be saved while we are still sinning. Sin is what we are saved from. In the words of Pope Francis, “God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.”

[Passages taken from Reflections on Sunday Readings from Dr. John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente