This morning’s Gospel reading is John 8:1–11:

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “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 any more.”

Note: Some parishes may use the Year A readings as Third Scrutiny Mass for parishes with catechumens entering the Church on Easter. The Gospel reading for Third Scrutiny Mass is John 11:1-45. I will list my prior reflections for the Year A readings below the links to my prior reflections on these readings.

 Not too long ago, before I went on vacation, I joked a bit in a Final Word post about selective amnesia and its value in certain contexts. "I sometimes think," I commented on one clip, "that politicians, pundits, and QBs in the NFL ... need a certain level of amnesia to function successfully." In the case of politicians and pundits, that certainly seems to be standard operating procedure; it might be nice to see less of it among both, however, to see how necessary it truly is.

When it comes to high-profile athletes like quarterbacks, though, selective amnesia is a requirement. Mental errors create setbacks in competition, and the bigger the error, the more damage it does. However, to continue playing, athletes must learn the lesson quickly while 'forgetting' the error to play confidently and assertively. Our natural instinct when we make errors and blunders is to withdraw, especially when our mistakes get a lot of attention from observers. We avoid our critics and our "coaches," so to speak, and either play with less confidence in our abilities or don't play at all.

And so, perhaps my joke about politicians and pundits isn't far off, either, since the same instincts apply there as well. We all make mistakes; how we deal with them speaks to character. In this business, the best way to handle mistakes -- perhaps even the most embarrassing -- is to publicly 'confess' to them, correct the record, and vow to do better. I've known a few who got too embarrassed by errors to continue working in this field, and quite a few more who prefer to pretend errors never happened or rationalize them away. The latter tends toward hypocrisy, while the former tends toward retreat, and neither approach offers the full expression of gifts.

In today's Gospel reading, we see all of these facets, and not in much subtlety either. We have an adulterous woman, who admits to her sins; we also have a crowd of elders who apparently do not. The elders are of particular interest here, in the sense of selective amnesia. They have all sinned but have summoned themselves as judges of someone else's sin, not to condemn the sin -- which would be reasonable -- but to condemn the sinner to death. They have conveniently forgotten their own sinfulness, if indeed they have forgotten it at all, in their rush to make themselves greater by making the adulterous woman smaller -- again, to the point of death.

Jesus intercedes here in an extraordinary fashion. The Pharisees have brought the case to Jesus as a test as to whether He will support the Mosaic law in imposing death for adultery. Jesus does not say a word to defend or condemn the woman, but instead starts writing on the ground; some speculate He was writing out the specific sins committed by the elders and Pharisees, but the Gospel does not make that clear. What is clear is that Jesus summoned His authority to break through the selective amnesia among the elders.

But Jesus did something else, too; Jesus shamed them by their own inaction. Not one of them would cast a stone under the terms Jesus imposed, which meant that they had tacitly admitted to their own sinfulness. At that point, all of the elders retreated in shame -- and that was a mistake, as we see next.

What does the woman do? She neither runs away nor denies her guilt. She stands with Jesus until He addresses her again, waiting patiently for His judgment. Her instincts must have been pulling her toward flight from public view, which is essentially the choice that the elders make in this confrontation; if not flight, then fight of a sort in which she denies her sinfulness. Instead, she chose neither, placing her full trust in Jesus' judgment in public. 

The elders had this choice, too. They could have remained and asked Jesus to consider their own sinfulness, or at least asked him to preach more on the topic. Instead, they slunk off, embarrassed and frustrated. They missed the blessing that the woman received by remaining in place, waiting for her judgment from Jesus and trusting in His mercy and justice. Jesus refuses to condemn her, and instead instructs her to return to her life and to "sin no more."

Imagine the weight that must have lifted off her shoulders. And imagine the weight that could have been lifted from the shoulders of the elders that day, too, by remaining to have Jesus address their sins as well. 

Of course, we don't have to imagine this; we know our own sins and our predilections toward sinfulness. We carry that around with us like a millstone, and our instincts are to hide -- or to rationalize our sins into virtues. Both of these are corrosive to our souls and toxic to our salvation. 

We are called to know our sins and to mourn them, but not to be trapped by them. Jesus came and died to set us free from our sins, ours personally and individually. Until we accept that and His salvation in our hearts, we will be forever tempted toward hiding or flaunting our sinfulness rather than bring our afflictions to Him. We have to 'forget' our sinful past to some extent to move beyond it and grow in our faith in the Lord.  

Paul addresses this in our second reading today in his letter to the Philippians. He writes of the need to let go of our past confessed sins in order to fully embrace our new identities as people of Christ:

It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. 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.

"What lies behind" is our education, our time in the square in which our sinfulness is made manifest before Christ. Our salvation is in abandoning that and proceeding to "sin no more" to the best of our abilities, and to bringing those afflictions that remain to the cross for Jesus to see. Our perfect maturity can be seen in the woman who stood in the square with her guilt exposed, waiting patiently for Jesus to judge what lies behind so that she could go forth as a new child of God and leave her old life behind her.  

That is our Lenten mission. It is our mission as an Easter people. And it is our mission to come together as children of God to help each other along that path of salvation.   

Previous reflections on these readings:

• In flagrante delicto: Sunday reflection (2022)
• The common touch: Sunday reflection (2019)
• Sunday reflection: John 8:1–11 (2016)

Previous reflections on the Year A readings:

• Create a Clean Heart: Sunday Reflection (2024)
• Lent and the original-sin dump: Sunday reflection (2023)
• From death into life: Sunday reflection (2020)
• Sunday reflection: John 11:1–45 (2017)
• Sunday reflection: John 11:1–45 (2015)

The front page image is "Le Christ et la femme adultère" (Christ and the adulterous woman) by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, c. 1750-3. On display at the Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.