The virtue of forgiving and the vice of forgetting (who we are)

Today's gospel (John 8: 1-11) sees Jesus perform one of His iconic acts of forgiveness. The woman who was brought to Him has been caught in adultery. The law is clear: she must be stoned to death. And yet Jesus blocks this process, inviting only those without sin to cast the first stones. In the end, everyone goes away, and Jesus tells the woman that He too does not condemn her but to go and sin no more.

There are several points that we could reflect on in this gospel. The first is to observe the difference between Jesus’ act of largess and what passes today for tolerance. Today's tolerance wishes to buffer the conscience against all discomfort. But that is not what Jesus does. He does not hesitate to call sin “sin”. Notice that He makes no excuses for the woman to the crowd who are mobbed about her. He does not, for example, suggest that perhaps she was committing adultery because her own marriage was so deeply unhappy, and that in this adultery she was actually clinging to an authentic expression of love. He does not forgive her on the basis that her sin was slight, or that rightly seen, she was really following the light. She was in the wrong. What she needed was not an excuse but a grace. In fact, she could not receive such a grace except from the hands of a Saviour who was intent on rescuing her. But notice finally that He sends her away with the duty to embrace her responsibilities. If she has been forgiven, she too must now change her path, put aside everything wayward, and turn back to the path that leads to God. So must we all, after sin and repentance.

Perhaps the second thing to observe is the risk we run of being that mob. Naturally, we do not want to behave like this towards people whose lives are unfaithful to the path of Christ. But more than that, there is perhaps the risk in us that we behave like this mob towards Jesus. This mob, after all, is not driven by outrage over the breaking of the law. Rather, this mob is instigated by those who are the rivals of Jesus. If the scribes and Pharisees are zealous for the law, they are perhaps even more zealous about their own status, and Jesus is a rival to this status.

So how do we rival with Jesus? Perhaps we do this when we are disappointed by our failure to be perfect. If we try again to be good after sin and repentance, that is no less then Jesus asks us to do: go and sin no more. If we then sin again, the appropriate response is contrition and repentance. But perfectionism teaches us to expect more of ourselves and, therefore, to be disappointed by our failures. Perfectionism, in other words, teaches us to focus ourselves and, thereby, rival with Christ.

The danger for most of the people reading this blog (and writing it!) is not that they, like the woman in this gospel, might fall into marital infidelity (although let’s not rule out the risk entirely!). The danger is that along the path of discipleship, we all might focus on ourselves and thereby forget who we really are: souls called to the friendship of Christ.