Fifth Sunday of Lent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, April 2, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, C, Vigil
April 2, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, in which we are eyewitnesses at one of the most powerful confrontations in the Gospel, when various Scribes and Pharisees drag before Jesus a woman caught in the very act of adultery asking whether it was licit to stone her to death.
• Last Sunday, as you remember, Jesus preached to us the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which stressed the Father’s undying love for every wayward child, the meaning of genuine repentance and the sadness of those who can’t share their father’s joy. In this Sunday’s Gospel, that story about God’s forgiveness takes on life, in the encounter of Jesus with the woman living a dissolute life and with the hardness of heart of all the “older brothers” who were trying to get her executed rather than striving to bring her to conversion and salvation.Just as Jesus wanted us last week to identify with the Prodigal Son, so he wants us to see ourselves in the woman caught red-handed; just as he wanted us to recognize that often we can behave like the older brother in the Parable who resents mercy given to sinful siblings, so, too, he wishes us to drop whatever stones are in our hands and use even other’s sins as a reminder of our own; and just as in last week’s Parable, he wanted to illustrate God’s infinite merciful love and his joy whenever one of his children is reconciled to him, so this Sunday he hopes that we will come to hunger to have as life-changing an experience with his mercy as did the adulterous woman.
• For this desired Lenten spiritual metamorphosis to take place, we first have to identify with the woman in this Sunday’s Gospel. By God’s mercy, probably none of us has had our sins exposed in all their shame and humiliation before the mobs. This is a far more common occurrence today, however, than in the ancient world. The metastasis of tabloid journalism, the rise of social media, and the popularization of the sins of gossip and detraction have made the destruction of others through the publication of their sins, or presumed sins, widespread. So many politicians, celebrities, churchmen and women religious, have been dragged to the front pages, stoned with millions of likes and shares and vitriol in comment boxes. But the phenomenon has also engulfed those with no major public profile, including teens and children, who have been so humiliated by cyber-bullying and sexting scandals that they have tragically submitted themselves to the death penalty. In my ministry for seven years serving as a chaplain for the Sisters of Life in New York, I have met so many girls and young women whose lives have been turned shamefully inside out because they have been caught red-handed, pregnant outside of marriage, as modern Hester Prynnes branded with scarlet letters, dealing with the reality that many of those closest to them are the ones with stones aimed at them and at the sons and daughters growing within them. So we know that the drama of this Gospel scene is constantly being replayed and we know many of the characters under the lights.
• Even if, however, we have not been similarly exposed to public shame, each of us is called to identify personally with the adulterous woman, because God has revealed to us repeatedly, especially through the Prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel, that every sin is an act of adultery, because it is being unfaithful to the spousal covenant of love we have entered into with God (see Jer 3:20, Is 1:21; Is 57:8, Hos 2:2-5; Hos 3:1-5; Hos 9:1; Ezek 16:30) Even though others may not have hauled us into public places, we know that every serious sin still has a death penalty associated with it, an eternal death penalty, which is why we call this type of sin “mortal.” This is the just consequence of such sins, because it’s what is ultimately chosen in sin. Just like the Prodigal Son in order to seize his inheritance treated his father as if the father were already dead, so through sin, we treat God the Father as if he is dead, we want to leave his home, and we want to go far from him and waste the inheritance of the treasure of grace he’s given us. We squander our dignity, we descend morally even beneath the pigs, and we push ourselves in the direction of definitive self-alienation from the Father and his love. It’s important in Lent to face this reality with brutal honesty, because unless we recognize that we have “greatly sinned … by our own … most grievous fault,” we don’t really need a Savior. Unless we recognize that we’re sick in need of the doctor, we won’t appreciate either the medicine of mercy or the Divine Physician who dies to dispense it.
• This is the chief message of salvation history. Through his prophets, God not only reminded Israel of its infidelity but showed his own faithful love, that even though Israel had chosen to cavort with idols of their own making, even though Israel had repeatedly chosen to sin, God’s will was to forgive her and purify her. These prophecies were fulfilled when Jesus himself came. Jesus didn’t die on the Cross for sinners who were “strangers” to him. He died for his Bride! He died for us. He, who with his sinless mother was the only one who fully merited to be able to cast a stone, took the stones, the nails, the beating, intended for us and died out of love so that we wouldn’t have to. And full of spousal love he wants us to receive that mercy. That’s what Pope Francis stressed nine years ago on the first Sunday after his election. He surprised everyone by taking the regular Sunday Mass at the Church of Saint Anne, just inside Vatican City gates. There, and in his first Angelus meditation based on this Sunday’s Gospel to the crowds assembled in St. Peter’s Square, he gave the same beautiful message. I’ll never forget hearing it live, present there 300,000 Catholic brothers and Sisters stretching all the way down the Via della Conciliazione. “God never tires of forgiving us,” he proclaimed. “It’s we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” Then he prayed, “May we never tire of asking for what God never tires to give!”
• That brings us to a second point. Receiving God’s mercy is meant to make us different than the mobs. The reason why Jesus’ message of forgiveness was so difficult for the Pharisees to understand was because they themselves had never truly experienced forgiveness or a God who loves them so much that he does forgive them. Jesus knew that although they might not have been committing similar deeds with their bodies, they were committing them with their mind. How was it that these men ended up catching this woman in the very actof adultery? It’s not as if she and the married man were caught in the middle of the temple area committing this sin. It’s probably because they had been keeping their eyes on her for weeks, lusting after her, and then raiding the place where the act was taking place. Some Church fathers speculate it was these sins that Jesus was writing on the ground as they awaited his verdict. Jesus’ response was showing far more than he was a great defense attorney. He was seeing straight into their hearts. That’s why he challenged them the way he did because he knew that it was precisely because of their sins that they were trying to bring the woman to be stoned. The lesson for us is that we, having been forgiven, need to be on the side of sinners rather than the side of the mobs. If we think we’re fit to toss stones at others, Jesus reminds us, those stones will in fact zero in on us as the target. When we pick up stones, rather, he calls us to use them to beat our own breasts. If we’re going to be truly Christian, we always have to embrace other sinners with love, try to bring them alongside us to receive God’s mercy, try with them out of love for God who gives life to hate the sins that bring death, and to go with them committed to sin no more.
• This Sunday, as we prepare to receive in Holy Communion the same body that hung upon the Cross, the same blood that dripped from the crown of thorns and the Lord’s five wounds, we remember that the Lord went through all of this to forgive us our sins. The judgmental Pharisees who were trying to condemn the woman in this Sunday’s Gospel were at the foot of the Cross taunting Jesus, as if he were a sinner himself. But from that Cross, Jesus looked up to the Father and said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!,” and then, specifically, to one repentant thief, he shared the fullness of that mercy, “Today I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.” The Lord we meet at Mass is Mercy Incarnate, who has come to save us from death, who has come to reveal the Father’s true loving face. The Lord we meet is the Bridegroom who washes us with water and the word and makes us anew his spotless Bride, ready for the consummation of our nuptial union that takes place on the marriage bed of the altar! The Lord we meet is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How blessed are those invited to the supper of that Lamb!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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