Henceforth, if she so desires, she can “walk in charity” ( Eph 5:2).
Jesus helps the woman to look to the future with hope and to make a new start in life. Go your way and from now on do not sin again” (vv. Jesus then says: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?… Neither do I condemn you. His purpose was to let God’s voice be heard in the consciences not only of the woman, but also in those of her accusers, who drop their stones and one by one leave the scene (cf. To those who wished to judge and condemn her to death, Jesus replies with a lengthy silence. Jesus’ only judgement is one filled with mercy and compassion for the condition of this sinner. The misery of sin was clothed with the mercy of love. Jesus looked that woman in the eye and read in her heart a desire to be understood, forgiven and set free. This Gospel account, however, is not an encounter of sin and judgement in the abstract, but of a sinner and her Saviour. Here what is central is not the law or legal justice, but the love of God, which is capable of looking into the heart of each person and seeing the deepest desire hidden there God’s love must take primacy over all else. Jesus, through his preaching and the total gift of himself that would lead him to the Cross, returned the Mosaic Law to its true and original intent. She is an adulteress and, in the eyes of the Law, liable to be stoned. Everything is revealed in mercy everything is resolved in the merciful love of the Father.Ī woman and Jesus meet. Mercy cannot become a mere parenthesis in the life of the Church it constitutes her very existence, through which the profound truths of the Gospel are made manifest and tangible. This page of the Gospel could easily serve as an icon of what we have celebrated during the Holy Year, a time rich in mercy, which must continue to be celebrated and lived out in our communities. What great mercy and divine justice shine forth in this narrative! Its teaching serves not only to throw light on the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, but also to point out the path that we are called to follow in the future.ġ. It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful or apt way of expressing the mystery of God’s love when it touches the sinner: “the two of them alone remained: mercy with misery”. Misericordia et misera is a phrase used by Saint Augustine in recounting the story of Jesus’ meeting with the woman taken in adultery (cf.
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