Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
Holy Mother Church chooses these two readings
for this day in Passion Tide
with great deliberation, obviously.
This reading about the false accusations against Susanna
of having committed adultery.
And then the Gospel from St. John
about the woman caught in adultery
are exactly parallel.
They're not identical by any means,
but they are certainly parallel.
In the case of...
Susanna, she was completely innocent
of the charges leveled against her.
And it was the malice of the elders,
those who were the guardians of the law
and their lust,
that led them to...
to completely lie, to calumniate Susanna,
even to the point that they were willing
to bring charges against her
that would end in...
her her death her her execution and of course God intervenes and in this miraculous way by raising
up Daniel this little boy giving him wisdom beyond his years and insight and Susanna is
delivered from the sentence and the wickedness of these individuals and they are put to death
themselves then in in the gospel today the woman caught in adultery is not like Susanna she is
she is not innocent and the charges brought against her are not lies and yet those who
bring the charges against her are not men of justice they are all also elders and the guardians
of the law and strictly speaking they are
following the dictate of the law she was actually caught in adultery and she had committed adultery
and according to the law she was to be stoned but the motives behind the action of the pharisees in
this case was not to uphold the law and execute justice their purpose rather was to trip our lord
up and they were using the woman they were using this this poor frail sinner as a tool
to get at our lord and so our lord saw through their malice and he exempted the woman by means
of his wisdom from the execution of a just sentence in fact saint augustine reflects that
when the woman was in the presence of the men who had the stones in their hand the pharisees
she was being threatened with death and she was terrified of course and our lord intervened
and by his his revealing basically the their sins to the pharisees he shoot them all off and
she was alive
left alone with our lord and saint augustine says if she had reasons to be afraid when she was
laying on the ground and people were holding stones over her head ready to throw them at her
she had even more reason to be afraid when she was left alone with our lord
because he could completely destroy her and he had a real right to do so and yet he did not
uh he asked her if there was no one in her life who could be afraid of her and he said yes and he
said yes and he said no and he said no and he said yes and he said no and he said no and he said no
to condemn her. And she said, no. And he said, neither do I condemn you. Go on your way and sin
no more. It isn't as though she didn't deserve the sentence in the old, according to the dictates of
the old law, or even something worse, which is, of course, hell for all eternity. All of us who
have committed mortal sins have deserved that sentence. But our Lord came into the world
to liberate us from sin and to bring us to heaven. And so our Lord is much more patient with us
than very often we are with other people. We should uphold the law and want to see
justice done, but we should want to see justice done.
For the right reasons, not out of motives of revenge and certainly not out of motives
of malice, which were what was behind the Pharisees in respect to the woman caught in
adultery and our Lord. We should want to see justice done because it is the right thing.
And because we wish to see society,
living in the light of Christ and see that the innocent are protected. But in any case,
you know, in general, the spirit by which we should be motivated should be that which
motivated our Lord, which is a spirit of mercy. We should not will the death of the sinner or the
agony of the sinner, but that they might be healed and lived.
and live. So we need to be patient with one another. This translates down into
very real and practical decisions that we make from day to day, which probably don't
have to do very often with executing the death penalty upon people that we know, but it
does have to do with exercising justice within our family and with our children as well.
. .
and also giving them the blessings of God Jesus, because feeling very joyed by the
example of our Lord Jesus. joined in a ministry gathering with a group of Hallelujah制.
our children and with the people with whom we live and at the same time knowing how to
do so in a merciful fashion, hoping for the correction of the sinner and recognizing at
the same time that while we have to be just and uphold the rights of the innocent and
protect our families and the society in which we live, today there's going to be another
attempt on the part of the crazy legislators in our state to ram same-sex marriage down
the church's throat again.
We have to do something about these things, but in the end, none of us stand in the position
of our Lord before that woman.
Our Lord had a right to her life because he was God and because he was innocent.
None of us are God.
And in the end, none of us are innocent.
We've all got it coming one way or another, and we need to remember that as we deal with
one another.
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