(Chapter 43:16-21)
There isn’t always a common thread through the three readings at the Sunday liturgy, but there is today. “Remember not the events of the past … see, I am doing something new!” God’s relationship with creation, with us, has always been about the future. Yes, the prophet knew that God at times was frustrated by Israel’s faithlessness, but even the punishment God imposed on those people was a means of forming them into a holy nation. It was about the future. It's good to remember this during Lent because, while we are encouraged during this season to reflect on the ways in which we have offended God, our reflection is worthwhile if it is accompanied by a resolution to re-form our lives, to become even more grateful children of God, who made us, and even more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, who has saved us.
Responsorial Psalm
(Psalm 126:1-6)
This psalm almost certainly refers to the release of the Judaeans from captivity in Babylon in the sixth century before the birth of Jesus. The former captives rejoice as they put their troubled past behind them, praising God for the newfound freedom. The exile is portrayed in Jewish scripture as God’s punishment for the Judaeans’ idolatry, but the end of captivity—although it may have been ordered by the Persian king Cyrus—is also seen ultimately as the work of God. Here again, the destiny of God’s people is not in their troubles, even the ones they brought on themselves, but rather on their determination to move on, to go home again, both literally and in a renewed submission to the will of God.
A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians
(Chapter 3:8-14)
In this letter, St. Paul strikes a similar chord. Paul had persecuted the infant Church, and he implies that, even though he has become a disciple, he has not attained “perfect maturity.” But Paul, far from wallowing in the past, has discarded it as “so much rubbish.” Only one thing matters now, he writes: “forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the price of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” We often hear the expression “faith journey” and it captures the dynamic in today’s readings. The life of a Christian is, indeed, a journey in which God calls us to leave behind the inevitable twists and turns and bumps and potholes and keep moving toward our goal—life forever in his presence.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
(Chapter 8:1-11)
This passage describes the encounter between Jesus and the woman who, according to some scribes and Pharisees, had been caught in “the act of adultery.” The accusers point out to Jesus, as if he didn’t know, that Jewish religious law required that “such women” be stoned to death. Under Roman rule, the Jews were not permitted to carry out capital punishment, so these men were not asking for permission to kill the woman; they were trying to get Jesus to say something contrary to the Jewish religious tradition. In a gesture that the evangelist doesn’t explain, Jesus responds at first by crouching and writing on the ground with his finger. This may have been his way of showing his disdain for this obvious attempt to embarrass him. When Jesus finally answers by challenging any person among the accusers who was “without sin” be the first to throw a stone at the woman, no one had the temerity to publicly claim to be sinless. The heart of the story comes next when, after the scribes and Pharisees had left the scene, Jesus and the woman face each other. Jesus does not add to her humiliation or ask about her supposed crime (“neither do I condemn you”). Instead he focuses on her future: “Go your way, and do not sin again.” That’s how Jesus addresses us when we come to him in penance: he puts aside our past failures as “rubbish” and invites us to begin anew our journey to life forever with God.
Painting: Christ With the Woman Taken in Adultery, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino), 1621. Public Domain.
Excerpts from the English translation of the Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL). All rights reserved.
Bill Ayers was a founder, with the late singer Harry Chapin, of WhyHunger. Bill was a radio and TV broadcaster for 40 years. He is a member of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Centerport, New York.