John 8,12-20 – Monday of the V Week of Lent
The famous page of the Gospel of John, narrated in today’s song, tells us the episode of the woman caught in adultery. The situation is clear and dramatic: the law of Moses provides for stoning. That woman, according to the law, must die. The question posed to Jesus is a trap. If he said not to kill her, it would seem to contradict the law and trivialize the value of loyalty. If instead he approved stoning, it would contradict all his preaching on mercy. It’s an alley apparently dead-end.
Yet Jesus does not fall into the trap. It does not deny the law, but brings it to its deepest truth. He invites those who hold the stones in their hands to look within themselves: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” It doesn’t shift the focus from the woman to the norm, but from the norm to the heart of man. So something decisive happens: one after the other, everyone leaves. Not because sin does not exist, but because no one can set himself up as an absolute judge, forgetting his own fragility. Jesus saves the woman without denying the truth. In fact he says to her: «Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more.” Here what we often separate is held together: justice and mercy. It is not a question of canceling the law, but of living it in the light of compassion.
The truth without mercy becomes condemnation; mercy without truth it becomes superficiality. In Jesus, however, both find fulfillment. This episode presents us with a very concrete question: when we are faced with the fragility of others, do we use the law to condemn or to understand? Are we more ready to throw stones or to recognize that we too need mercy? True conversion, then, is not to stop seeing evil, but to stop using it against others without first looking within ourselves. It is there that the Gospel begins to change our way of being in front of others.
