3/13/2016 – 5th Sunday of Lent – Cycle C – John 8:1-11

      We are getting close to the end of our Lenten journey with Jesus.  This weekend, we commemorate the 5^th Sunday of Lent.   Next Sunday, we will commemorate the Passion of the Lord with Palm Sunday and will enter our Holy Week liturgies.   One of my favorite Catholic authors is the Jesuit priest James Martin.  One of his books is entitled Heaven and Mirth, highlighting the joy and humor and laughter that are an important part of our Catholic spirituality.  Even though today’s Gospel contains a very important and serious message, I thought of a lighthearted story concerning today’s Gospel.  So, the Scribes and Pharisees are gathering around Jesus with a crowd, presenting a woman to Jesus.  Jesus asks them: "What's going on here, anyway?"  One of the Pharisees responds: "This woman was found committing adultery.  The law says that we should stone her!" "Wait," yells Jesus. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Suddenly, Jesus sees a stone being thrown from someone in the crowd.  Jesus looks out into the crowd and he sees the Virgin Mary standing there.  Jesus yells out: “Mom!  Would you stop showing off! I'm trying to make a point here!"

       Today’s Gospel does highlight an important teaching.  We are all sinners.  None of us can throw the stone at the sinful woman in the Gospel today.  Yet, as a spiritual work of mercy, our Holy Catholic Church calls us to admonish the sinner.  As we have mentioned through our reflections during Lenten, we often have an easy time approaching the corporal works of mercy, such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and visiting the sick and the prisoner.  The spiritual works of mercy, however, are perhaps less well known and more difficult to live out in our journey of faith.  In our reflections at mass these past few weeks, we have looked at counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, comforting the afflicted, and forgiving offenses.  Today’s Gospel of the sinful woman, of no one being worthy of casting a stone at her, brings to mind the spiritual work of mercy of admonishing the sinner.  That does not sound like it is an easy thing to do, does it?  The word admonish comes from a Latin word – monere – meaning to warn or advise or alert someone of a threat or danger.  We admonish the sinner out of love and concern, not in order to degrade or belittle him. We alert the sinner of the danger of his sinful course of action.  We admonish the sinner not out of arrogance or pride, but out of love, humility, and charity.  In our modern Western society that is becoming more secular, many falsely see admonishing the sinner as an attempt by the admonisher to impose his values on others or to make some sort of arbitrary judgment on that person.

        But, in our faith journey, we are to admonish the sinner out of the brotherly love we have for him, to reach out in a spirit of mercy and charity. But we also do so in order to bring our brothers and sisters to repentance.  We can see an example in Pope Francis in the way we are to admonish the sinner.  Pope Francis visited Cuba recently.  He used his visit with Fidel and Raul Castro and the other leaders of that country to spur them to reform and to greater openness to faith and civic groups that that been oppressed for so long in their county.  But the Pope did so by asking the people to foment a revolution in their society and in their lives that comes about through tenderness, that comes through a joy that becomes closeness and compassion, that leads us to get involved in and to serve in the live of others.  Rather than just berating the Cuban leaders and scolding them, which would have been very easy for Pope Francis to do, he instead tried to form a brotherly bond with the leaders and the people of Cuba.  Pope Francis used strong and direct words when he visited the United States on his pastoral visit as well, talking about the need for us to support the institutions of marriage and the family and to address things like climate change and our stewardship of the environment, but he did so calling himself a son of the Americas just like those of us who live in the United States.  You might remember that rather than scolding Congress in his address at the US Capitol, Pope Francis challenged all of us to follow the Golden Rule from the Gospel of Matthew: To do to others whatever we would have them do to us, this being the summary of the law and the prophets.  The Pope used the great Americans Abraham Lincoln, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton as examples for us to follow as we journey in faith.   But admonishing the sinner with compassion and love means that we sometimes have to say some words that someone does not want to hear.  It means that we have to have to leave our comfort zone to be bold and direct with someone.  And that is not easy, is it?  Our journey of faith is not about taking the easy way out.  It is not about cheap grace.  It is not about a faith that lacks sacrifice or courage or commitment.  During these days of Lent, we are called to journey with Jesus on his way to the cross.  We are called to carry our own crosses and to look at those ways we need to repent and change.  And we are called to help our brothers and sisters to do the same.  That is why we are called to admonish the sinner.

       Let us pray:  Lord, give us the courage and the humility to live out your works of mercy in our lives.  Give us to courage to admonish sinners and the grace to do it in love. Help us to have the fortitude and the humility to accept correction ourselves.  Lord, grant us the grace to see that when we are corrected,  it as an act of love, even if it the way it is done is a bit rough around the edges. In Jesus’ name we pray.  AMEN.