Dear Friends in Christ,

The Gospel passage describes the encounter of sin with divine mercy. The Pharisees who bring the adulterous woman have already decided that she must die; they focus on her past and want the law to be applied to her. Jesus doesn't want to play their game because none of them can pronounce just judgment. They too have a sinful past. It is Jesus who will exercise judgment, not by condemning, but by offering a way of salvation. He doesn't condemn because he looks to the future, to the plan he has lovingly established for each person.

We are all sinners. We carry written in our fallen nature that inclination toward evil that makes us weak. But Christ rescues the adulteress from the death penalty. A law can make an adulteress die, but only Jesus can make an adulteress begin to live. Christ did not come into the world to condemn man, but to save him and give him life. Sin and death are left behind, and a new horizon of love and forgiveness appears. Jesus will always stand beside us to defend us from the judgments of men; he sets only one condition: that we repent and rectify our ways.

God is always willing to forgive us. This is the great novelty of the Gospel: Forgiveness restores us to life and allows us to begin anew each day. In this season of Lent, we can hear the Word of God anew and mourn over our sins. Christians do not belong to that category of people who always look back, but to that category of courageous people who open themselves with enthusiasm and confidence to the future. Our God is the God of the second, third, fourth chance and ...

New life in Christ is born from forgiveness. Isaiah said to the Israelites: “Remember not the former things, but what he has done is new.” And what made Saint Paul a generous and happy apostle was the thought that he had to forget his past to launch himself into what remained for him to do. It is time to make good resolutions: to fight courageously against sin. To approach confession confident of forgiveness. To forgive in order to be forgiven. Christ says to the adulteress, and to each one of us: “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

This Lent, how is your struggle against sin?

All the best…in Christ,

Father Wilson

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