THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
April 2-3, 2022, St. Lambert
Is
43:16-21
Phil
3:8-14
Jn 8:1-11
Praised be Jesus Christ!
The passage we read from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians
started out thus:
We may give these words lip service, but if we think for half
a minute about their implications, they sound terribly radical and out of
character with today’s typical approach to Catholicism. True or False? I will
leave to each of you the duty of examining your own conscience in that regard.
Maybe it is not a problem here, but in both Switzerland and Germany I was
forever running into people who classed themselves “grown-ups” in the faith, in
German mündige Katholiken, who for example were forever balking at
traditional Catholic moral teaching and rejecting the authority of the Church
to tell them what was objectively a sin and what was not. Total folly worthy of
a scribe or a Pharisee!
These
words of St. Paul also clarify or underline just what is at stake in the
tension which marks the scene in the Gospel for today, which puts Jesus at odds
with the scribes and the Pharisees. In the Gospel for today there can be no
mistake that the scribes and the Pharisees reject Jesus and His message. There
can be little doubt that this was a calculated, a deliberate rejection, which they
sought to drive home by their attempt to corner Jesus on the question of what
to do with this woman caught in adultery. The law says she should be stoned to
death. What does Jesus the Teacher say?
This
particular Sunday is a very appropriate time to address this question. Our
Gospel from John Chapter 8 provides us with another perspective, besides the meditation
on the Cross of Christ itself, for our Lenten prayer and reflection in this our
season of Passiontide starting today. With the Fifth Sunday, Lent enters its
final stage calling us to focus our thoughts on the suffering and death of Our
Lord and Savior. We can see that the Cross of Christ is the high point, but
with other passages from the Gospels we can better understand the scandal of
the Cross and what is at stake in the suffering and death of Our Lord. We can
understand better St. Paul’s message to the Christians at Philippi and to the
Church right up to our day.
“I
consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I
consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not
having any righteousness of my own based on the law…”
Both
in Christ’s own time and up until now, believing people who know and understand
the message of the prophet Isaiah from the first reading were and must be
heartbroken by such a failure on the part of the leaders of the people. The
scribes and Pharisees were not just challenging Jesus’ authority, they were
putting themselves clearly at odds with God’s Chosen One. In challenging Christ,
the chosen people were balking at their own chosenness, their own election by
God to be a people peculiarly His own. They were turning their backs on God’s
favor for them; they were choosing to go their own way. “Wild beasts honor
me, jackals and ostriches, for I put water in the desert and rivers in the
wasteland for my chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for myself,
that they might announce my praise.”
There
are various such confrontations between Jesus and the authorities of the people
reported in the Gospels. Like the showdown in the Temple recounted today by St.
John, time and again these leaders of the people are trying to press Jesus. This
time they want to push Him on the basis of the prescripts of the law to condemn
the woman caught in the act of adultery. Here especially it is all too evident
that the scribes and the Pharisees could care less about this woman; they want
to cancel Jesus, undermine His personal authority among the people. The whole
thing is plainly brutal, demonstrating a total lack of respect for the woman. But
it is Jesus Who brings everything back into focus with those memorable words, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first
to throw a stone at her.”
Let me be clear! Jesus is not saying, who am I to judge? He
is not cancelling the law of the Old Testament. Nor is He abdicating His own
authority as God, but rather He is calling the authorities personally to
account. “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a
stone at her.” As far as the woman caught in adultery, He does not fudge
either: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No
one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do
not sin anymore.”
Jesus is to be found in the midst of life and so is or should
be our faith in Him. It is absolute truth and uncompromising. We may not be
sufficiently catechized; we may be ignorant of our faith, but that does not
permit us to deprive Jesus of His identity as the Son of God and Savior of the
world. Nor can we deny the Church which He established on the rock of Peter and
the apostolic faith to lead us all securely and sufficiently to Christ and
heavenly glory. Sadly, however, lots of people, including priests and bishops,
get nervous when we talk about the fulness of the truth or of the Catholic
Church as the one true faith.
“I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme
good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of
all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be
found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law…”
Both the account of Christ’s Crucifixion and this incident of
Jesus dispersing those appealing to the law as reason to execute this woman
despite their own sins and bad conscious can help us understand the freedom
which is ours and our obligation to choose Christ Crucified and Christ the
Giver of the Law as the primary authority for our lives.
We
are a week away from Palm Sunday. The communal penance services in preparation
for Easter will be starting here in Sioux Falls. We’ve added a couple extra
times for confession here at St. Lambert as well, which should appear in the
bulletin or elsewhere. Your daily examination of conscience may have revealed
real sins and failures to you. If not, I still won’t let you off the hook
unless you can show your commitment to Christ and His Church as full and
uncompromising. Without disrespect for non-Catholics, we have to challenge
ourselves to hear Christ’s Word and put His law into practice. We have to place
Christ on the throne in our hearts and lives which is rightfully His. Catholic
Church teaching must once again in Christ recover the high ground for us
personally and for our families.
As horrible and accusatory as it sounds, my simple message
would be that there is nothing to be gained in aligning yourselves with the scribes
and the Pharisees. Hold, please, rather to the teaching of St. Paul!
“I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme
good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of
all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be
found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law…”
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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