TEXT: Fifth Sunday of Lent, April 6, 2025
April 6, 2025 Father De Celles Homily
5th Sunday of Lent
April 6, 2025
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
Throughout the Scriptures God uses various metaphors
to explain how He loves us and how we should love Him.
Sometimes He compares the relationship to a shepherd and His sheep,
or a vinedresser in his vineyard, or even master and servants.
The most common comparison, or metaphor,
is when He compares Himself to a father who loves his children,
as we saw last Sunday in the parable of the prodigal son.
But there’s another common comparison He uses
all over the Old and New Testaments which can be even more powerful.
That is the metaphor of the bridegroom and his bride,
likening God to a husband and His people to His wife.
So, for example, in the Old Testament we read how God says to Israel,
“As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you,”
and “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!”
And St. Paul writes,
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her…”
This is powerful imagery:
In it we see how God approaches us not with cold, harsh demands,
but with joyful, devoted and faithful love–
a love so strong and faithful that He would even die to save His beloved.
But the imagery also has another side:
God longs for us to love Him back,
to love Him with equal devotion, joy and faithfulness.
Unfortunately, most of the time we fail to love Him this way
—from the depth of our souls, as the desire of our hearts.
In fact, as the Old Testament points out, we often fail miserably.
So, the prophets frequently lament that God’s people
are often more like unfaithful harlots
or self-serving prostitutes going from one god to another
than like loving faithful wives.
So then, while marriage is a symbol and metaphor
of the faithful love that should exist between God and mankind,
adultery becomes the metaphor for man’s infidelity, or sin.
So, in today’s Gospel, we find Jesus is in the Temple,
where the scribes and Pharisees bring to Him a woman caught in adultery.
And they ask,
“Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do You say?”
Rather than seizing on the moment and immediately addressing the situation,
Jesus does something He does nowhere else in Scripture:
He almost seems to ignore them. Scripture tells us,
“Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.”
It’s only after “they continued asking Him,” that He finally answered them.
Over the centuries many people, scholars and ordinary folks,
have speculated as to what it was that Jesus was doing.
What was He thinking about? What was He writing in the sand?
Here’s what I think:
I think He was thinking about His tumultuous marriage
to His unfaithful bride.
Of how many times Israel had begged for His love and then scorned it, and
had pledged her fidelity and then betrayed Him.
And not just in the corporate acts of the nation,
but also in the singular acts of individuals.
And here they were, once again, testing their Bridegroom.
How fitting a scenario:
Israel testing God by bringing an adulterous woman
into His home, the temple.
Perhaps He was writing in the sand the words of the prophet Hosea:
“Rejoice not, O Israel! …for you have played the harlot,
forsaking your God.”
So, Jesus stands up and says to the Pharisees and scribes,
“Let the one among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Many understand this to mean that Jesus is
saying that since the Pharisees and scribes have their own sins,
they are in no position to judge the woman’s sins.
But He’s not saying that at all.
Of course, Jesus did see this woman, and each of those in the crowd,
as individual persons to whom He would personally extend His mercy.
But the point is, He saw not just that one woman
but every individual, since the time of Adam and Eve,
who has been unfaithful to Him.
He saw each and every act of betrayal and
the sins of each and every man, woman and child.
He sees your sins and mine.
But He sees them not like a bookkeeper or lawyer,
coldly calculating the cost or the punishment for breaking the rules.
Rather, He sees them as a loving and faithful husband
who sees his young wife flirt, or sleep with, or run away with another man.
He sees them as a lover whose heart has been broken.
And yet, like the devout, faithful and good husband He is,
He responds not with vengeance, but with love:
“Please stop, my beloved, let’s try again…
Return to me and all will be as it should be.”
Or as St. John tells us, “Do not sin anymore.”
How would you feel if your beloved had other lovers besides you?
“I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before Me.”
Or how would you feel if you gave your beloved everything you had,
and they refused to spend even one day, even one hour a week with you?
“Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.”
Imagine a bridegroom who works hard and scrimps and saves
to buy his new spouse a beautiful house where they can live together,
and she let it go to ruin, or worse, burned it to the ground.
In the beginning, God gave mankind the gift of life
so that we could share in His life and love.
How it must devastate Him when we abuse or destroy that life.
“You shall not kill.”
Lying, cheating, stealing, disrespecting family, coveting others and their things…
all these are direct affronts to God’s intense love
and a mockery of our Beloved’s gifts to us.
Not to mention the sins of adultery.
Created in the image of God, and dramatically reflecting the love of God for us,
offenses against marriage and the gift of sexuality
bring a particular sorrow to our Divine Bridegroom.
Marriage and sexuality are gifts He gives us to experience and to express
true mutual, total, permanent, faithful and life-giving love.
Love that flows from and flows toward the love of God Himself.
So, any sin against this gift of nuptial love
pierces the heart of the Divine Bridegroom in the most profound way.
Christ looks at all of our sins, and they pierce His heart.
But instead of responding with hatred or anger,
He responds like a devoted and faithful and patient husband,
saying, “Let’s try one more time…Go and sin no more.”
____
Now, we rightly see in this God’s merciful love for us.
But, as I mentioned before, some try to say that Jesus did not judge the woman,
so that teaches us never to judge anyone.
Notice, though, what Jesus tells the woman:
“Has no one condemned you? …Neither do I condemn you.”
Jesus talks about “not condemning”, not about “not judging”.
Condemning is making a decision that someone should be punished,
and about how they should be punished.
Judging is simply making a decision that someone has done something wrong.
[That’s different from a rash judgment
—judging too quickly without all the information or without reason–
that’s always wrong.]
But Jesus doesn’t rebuke the Pharisees for their judgment
that the woman committed adultery (“done something wrong”).
In fact, it seems clear that Jesus has made the same judgment,
telling her, “Do not sin anymore.”
So, what He rebukes the Pharisees for is, not for judging, but for condemning and determining to stone her.
Jesus withholds His own condemnation, and let’s her go:
“Neither do I condemn you. Go…”
We judge people, at least the right or wrong of their actions, all the time
—and rightly so.
In fact, Lent is a season of judgment—mostly self-judgment.
Jesus says to us, as He did to the Pharisees, “Are you without sin?”
And if we’re honest, we’ll judge ourselves guilty of many sins.
We will recognize in ourselves
the same infidelity and harlotry of both the woman and the Pharisees.
This infidelity is rampant in our world today.
But it is especially painful to see it in our Church,
since the Church is clearly the Bride of Christ in the New Testament.
When we see vast numbers of individual Catholics,
including many priests, bishops and cardinals,
who live lives filled with greed, envy, and lies,
as well as sexual impurity and infidelity,
we can only imagine the pain this causes the heart of Jesus.
In today’s Gospel Jesus judges the adulterous woman
and tells her, “Do not sin any more.”
But He did not condemn her. He did not give up on her.
And we must do the same.
How can we help others if we don’t judge
whether they’re hurting themselves or others?
How can we help ourselves this Lent
if we don’t judge ourselves and see the ways
we are hurting ourselves, others, and Jesus, especially,
and see how we need to change?
Even as we remember, like Christ, we must not condemn.
We must not give up on anyone,
even the most unfaithful sinner, and most especially ourselves.
My children in Christ, let us turn now in prayer to the Divine Bridegroom,
begging Him to help us to recognize the infidelity in and around our lives.
Let us beg Him, in His boundless mercy,
to forgive the times we’ve broken His sacred heart by our sins.
And let us beg Him to give us the grace to make His command our way of life,
as we “go and sin no more.”