And, Jesus sees this, as He sees the Pharisees and the Scribes, who, in fact, are just as guilty as her, because, actually, it is not Jesus to whom they should be taking this woman, but, rather the proper authorities who would have judged her, indeed, worthy of death. They were taking her to Jesus so that they could accuse Him and condemn Him, so that they could betray Him to the Romans, yet, in the end, it backfired.
This is why Jesus bends down and writes something in the sand, while no one knows exactly what it was, many seem to believe it was their sins, which is why Jesus then says to them: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” This, too, is why instead of throwing that first stone, the Pharisees and Scribes dropped those stones, one by one and left her alone, condemning neither her nor Jesus. So that when He looked up after the second time, He asked her: “Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.”
Jesus could have condemned her, He could have condemned the Pharisees and Scribes, but, instead, He traced their sins in the sand, knowing that what was written would, ultimately, be removed by the winds of forgiveness. In fact, the Holy Spirit, the 3rd Person of the Most Blessed Trinity is also seen as the breath of God, the one, indeed, who blows upon the sands where the sins are to be removed. The same way our sins are removed by the words of absolution, the words the priest speaks and blesses us with at the end of confession, because the Holy Spirit comes upon us as well.
Yet, that was not the end, because though their sins were now forgiven, though no one has been condemned, attached to it, is an important command: “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
What that means and what He is saying is that though the sin has been removed, within that plea for mercy is the promise that the same sin will no longer be committed, that as she leaves, she also leaves, once and for all, those sins behind.
And, that same experience awaits us all, if only we take advantage, because within that confessional, no one brings us before Jesus, no one condemns, except ourselves, it is us who hold the stone, and rightly so. And, while our sins are exposed, it is not Jesus who writes them in the sand, it is us, but He tells us that by doing so, the winds of forgiveness will wipe them away, that they will be nothing more than broken memories of the past.
He takes that stone from out of our hands, lets it fall to the ground, and says: “neither do I condemn you.” But, as one Scripture scholar notes: “with those words He saved her…and what did it cost her? “go and sin no more.” Yet, he says, But what did it cost Him, what did it cost Jesus? Everything.
Because, though mercy, though forgiveness is given freely, it cost Christ the shedding of His blood, it cost Him the pain of His Passion and the nails in His hands and in His feet. And, while it is something we may not want to think about it, it is our sins that contribute to those pains just as much as anyone else, because that is what it means when we say Christ suffered for us, when we say Christ died for us, because though it was for all of us, individually, each of us are responsible for what happened, we are all contributors to the crucifixion.
That is why when Jesus tells this woman and tells us, in the words of absolution, to sin no more, there should be an effort on our part, a striving to avoid those sins and all sins in the future. Or to quote St. Paul, in our second reading today: “to gain Christ and to be found in Him, and to count everything else as a loss, everything else as mere “rubbish” forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”
There is a great saint and mystic by the name of Ven. Mary of Agreda, in fact, her visions inspired parts of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion. And, it is she puts it well, she says: “Without penance there shall be no grace, without reform no pardon, without pardon no glory…[but] she says God does not withhold His mercy from anyone who seeks to obtain it.
Our goal in life is holiness and, therefore, our greatest goal should be to root out sin in our lives, no matter what it is, so that, like this woman in our Gospel when we leave that confessional we should go to “go and to sin no more,” so that, in the end, in the words of St. Paul we, too, can say: “I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling…the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
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