How easy and quick it is to build up resentments
from nothing! It may be a different perspective or way of doing things, it may
be impatience on my part, something I expected that didn't happen! Perhaps it
is also someone who holds a view or an opinion I don’t share or that is opposed
to mine.
How quickly does the resentment
develop in my mind into condemnation of the other? Today’s challenge is to love
everybody and not to condemn! Reading the text below it is a tall order, but then
Jesus always aims high!
While Jesus was
teaching in the temple, the Scribes and Pharisees brought in a woman who had
been caught in the act of committing adultery. They said to Jesus, ‘In the law
Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ (Jn. 8:5).
They wanted to
set a trap for him. If Jesus had shown himself to be against the stoning, they
could have accused him of going against the law. According to the law, the
eye-witnesses had to begin stoning the one who had sinned, to be followed by
the rest of the people. If, instead, Jesus had confirmed the death sentence,
they would have made him contradict his own teaching about God’s mercy to
sinners.
But Jesus,
bending down and writing on the ground with his finger, showed how unruffled he
was. He straightened up and said:
When they heard
this, the accusers went away one by one, beginning with the eldest. Jesus then
turned to the woman and asked, ‘Where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She
said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way,
and from now on do not sin again’ (see Jn. 8:10-11).
With these
words, Jesus certainly doesn't show himself as permissive in front of evil,
such as adultery. His words: ‘Go your way, and from now on do not sin again’
clearly state God’s commandment.
Jesus wishes to
unmask the hypocrisy of those who set themselves up as judges of a sister who
has sinned, without recognizing that they too are sinners. Like this his words
underline his famous declaration: ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.
For with the judgement you make, you will be judged’ (Mt 7:1-2).
Speaking in this
way, Jesus is addressing also those who totally condemn others, with no consideration of the penitence that can
well up within the heart of the guilty. And he clearly shows how he treats
those who fall: with mercy. When all had gone away from the woman taken in adultery,
‘Two were left,’ as Augustine of Hippo wrote, ‘misery and mercy.’
How can we put
this word of life into practice?
Let’s remember,
as we come before each brother or sister, that we too are sinners. We have all
sinned and, even though it seems to us that we've not done anything seriously
wrong, we have always to bear in mind that we may not realize the heavy
circumstances that caused others fall so low, making them stray from God. How
would we have done in their place?
We too, at
times, have broken the bond of love that ought to unite us to God; we've not been faithful to him.
If Jesus, the
only man without sin, didn't throw the first stone at the adulteress, then neither
can we at anyone whoever it may be.
And so, have
mercy for all, react against those impulses that drive us to condemn without
pity—we have to know how to forgive and forget. No harbouring in our hearts any
lingering judgement or resentment, where anger and hatred can breed and
alienate us from our brothers and sisters. See everyone as new.
Having in our
hearts, rather than judgement and condemnation, love and mercy for each person,
we will help each person begin a new life, we will constantly give courage to
start afresh.
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