Por José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha
(Conferencia Santa María, Guadalajara)
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"Master, this woman has been caught in the very act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say?"
With this question, they were laying a trap for him, in order to have something to accuse him of. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger began to write on the ground. And as they were pressing him with questions, Jesus stood up and said to them:
He who is without sin among you, he shall cast the first stone.
And bending down again, he continued to write on the ground.
-Neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more" (John 8:1-11).
What was Christ writing, what would he be writing as he withstood the trap the Pharisees were trying to set for him? Often, as a child, I asked myself this question when I read John's Gospel or heard it preached. Where was the Lord's thought? Certainly not in the condemnation of the sinful woman whom He had to treat with the mercy that only the incarnate God can bestow. He must have been focused on the woman's suffering, on the public shame of her sin, or at least on her being caught in it, in sin. Christ sees in the woman's heart many mixed feelings. He sees the successive events that have led her to sin and feels pity for the sinner!
He also sees and scrutinises the souls of the accusers. They do not care about the woman, they do not care about her sin, they only care about bringing Him once again into a trap, into which, once again, He would not fall. Surely in the turmoil that forms around the woman, He distinguishes between those who truly want to keep the Law of Moses with a clean spirit and those who only want to overlook their own sins. They do not notice and do not seem to care about the other party: the man necessary to consummate the adultery and of whom the "friends of the Law" seemed not to remember.
Finally, Christ will not justify a wrong behaviour: "go and sin no more". It is not right but: who is free from sin ..............!
Sometimes, we often pretend that it is others who have to rectify and not us and we do it, also with unfortunate frequency, as if from a superior moral stage. A sin from which we are not free in the Conferences. Are we really justified in this position and display of moral strength or have we just pretended it, while we are as sinful, or even more, than the brother who is committing the condemnable offence?
On the other hand, I finally discovered that it was not important what Jesus was writing. It was only important for the Evangelist, and it should be important for all people of good will, certainly for Christians, to convey the gentleness of Christ towards the sinner. The tenderness with which he always waits for us to love us and to show us the way. There will be no justification for wrongdoing on his part. He will not justify. But he cannot go against himself: he cannot go against Love.
To Christ always through and with Mary
