Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

April 6, 2025
University Catholic Center of University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, Texas

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126:1-2,2-3, 4-5, 6
Philippians 3:8-14
John 8:1-11

Pope Francis in bringing to conclusion the extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy in 2016 entitled his apostolic letter with that very phrase — Miseria et Misericordia — thus highlighting the interpretation that Saint Augustine gave to this seminal passage of the Scriptures. The Holy Father wrote: “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.’ What great mercy and divine justice shine forth in this narrative!”

Their accusation of the woman caught in adultery was also an attempt to falsely accuse Jesus out of adherence to their own religious ideology. The hypocritical accusers pretend to entrust the judgment of this poor woman to Jesus, but it is Jesus Himself whom they wish to accuse and to judge. Their pretense displayed before Jesus brings to mind the dialogue between Adam and God in the Garden of Eden where Adam, fraught with shame, blasphemously and with self-justification accuses God of his own sin of collusion with Eve, “The woman whom you put here with me — she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.”

Jesus’ response to the woman’s accusers is both revelatory and disconcerting to them; He stoops over and begins to write on the ground. When the scribes and Pharisees persist, he subtly permits the accusers’ sins to accuse the accusers by inviting the one who is without sin to throw the first stone. Then Jesus returns to His writing. The accusers silently slip away, remembering their own sins and hypocrisy, preferring to shroud them instead of accepting Christ’s Mercy. In their hardness of heart, they refuse to repent and to recognize Jesus for who He truly is and whom they have come to know Him to be, the Christ and the Son of God, who can forgive sins.

Jesus’ gentle mercy extended toward the distraught and humiliated woman is one of the most tender moments in the entire Gospel. The sin of this woman and her partner had done damage both to themselves and to their spouses and families. Sin fractures relationships that should be ordered to love, especially the relationship we have with God. Her sadness was overwhelming, and she knew she deserved punishment. She stood there waiting, unable to move, paralyzed by shame. When Jesus looked at her, he asked simply: “Where did they all go? Has no one condemned you?” Then instead of condemning this woman in accord with the Old Covenant, He fulfills the Old Covenant; He releases her from sin and offers her the authentic hope and grace possible only His New and Eternal Covenant, “to go and sin no more.”

The conversion of the woman is subtle, and our understanding of it is key to our own Lenten journeys of conversion. In her encounter with Jesus and only through the Grace that He offers her; the woman moves from regret at having her sin exposed to authentic contrition for her sins with true repentance. It is precisely this conversion born of Grace that enables Saint Paul to write the words that we have heard in today’s second reading: “Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” This Grace enables each of us to turn away from sin and to remain faithful to the Gospel, not simply to desire release from our feelings of guilt and regret while maintaining attachment to our sinful practices in word, thought, and actions. This Grace offers us honest humility not to judge and condemn our neighbor and at the same time the ability to be inflexible with sin, starting with our own.

Jesus offers this woman caught in adultery the gift of confidence through His forgiveness of her sins. We desire to receive what He offered her and what she accepted: the freedom that comes from conversion mercifully extended to us in the Truth. This is the fruit of a good sacramental confession that does not simply “expunge our record” but that gives us the Grace to turn away from the false allure of sin not only in our feelings but more importantly in our actions. Jesus offers us the same gift of confidence through the same means. As Pope Benedict XVI observed, “God wants only goodness and life for us; he provides for the health of our soul through his ministers, delivering us from evil with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so that no one may be lost but all may have the opportunity to convert.”

As we enter these final days of Lent, if we have not done what we should, let us join the woman in the Gospel and in our sinful misery kneel before the face of Mercy. May each of us take the time to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and make a good confession in which we offer an expression of our sorrow for offending God instead of only offering a recitation of a list of rules that we have violated. Then, repentant of our sins and filled with gratitude and the confidence of mercy, we can truly make our sincere prayer the proclamation of the prophet Isaiah we heard in our first reading, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!” Heeding those same words of the Prophet, we offer now the New and Eternal Covenant of His reconciling sacrifice on the Cross, His unconditional love made present in the Eucharist.