Sunday, April 6, 2025

5rd Sunday of Lent – ​​Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Isaiah 43,16-21

Psaume : 125 (126),1-2ab,2cd-3,4-5, 6

2rd reading: Philippians 3,8:14-XNUMX

Gospel: John 8,1-11

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This woman has two options: hardening or conversion. Hardening would consist of saying: "I had a close call, I had a lucky escape, next time I'll avoid getting caught." (By the way, it's still difficult to commit adultery alone... Where is the man who committed adultery with her? Why isn't he before Jesus? This is a question I don't have an answer to, except that it suggests the complicity of those who brought this woman.

 The other solution is conversion. And here again, there are two possibilities: Pharisaic conversion or Christian conversion.

The Pharisaic conversion is what Paul tried for years. And he goes so far as to say—this is what he describes in the few lines before the magnificent passage we heard in the second reading—that for the righteousness of the law, he became an irreproachable man. And we have no reason to question Paul's words. But in the encounter he has with Christ on the road to Damascus, an upheaval will take place in him which makes him pass from the state of Pharisee to the state of disciple of Jesus Christ.

This is what he describes in this reading we have heard. (A passage that I cannot urge you to reread often enough—Philippians chapter 3.) What is Paul saying? He is saying, in fact, that wanting to convert me, wanting to be righteous by my own strength alone, is a dead end; and that he, upon discovering Christ crucified for him, in this dead end, turned around to take another path. “All the advantages I once had — especially that of being an irreproachable man: “I have done everything well. Lord, you can consider me a good person” — I consider them all loss because of the greater good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”. And you will notice that, as Thérèse will do later, on such an important point, he does not call Jesus “our Lord”, but “mon “Lord”: it was in this intimate, existential encounter between Paul and Jesus that something shifted. Paul understood that Jesus had given his life for him, Paul. This is what he would say to the Galatians: “The Son of God loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2,20:XNUMX). Thérèse would exclaim much later: Jesus did crazy things for us.

And what is Paul's response? It is to say: but it is Jesus who makes me righteous. It is Jesus, by his death and resurrection, that is to say by his merciful love which goes so far as to give his life for me, who makes me righteous! And since Jesus makes me righteous, then I want to respond to Jesus by doing what pleases him. I want to respond to his love with my love. There is, in this conversion, a true inversion. The religious man is spontaneously Pharisee, that is to say, he wants to act well so that God finds that what he is doing is truly good and so that God will then begin to love him. This is what we carry deep within us in a certain way... Christian conversion is to discover the complete opposite: that this love is primary, which Saint John will express in his first Letter by saying: “This is love: it was not that we loved God, but that he first loved us and gave his Son as a sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4,10:XNUMX). To discover that God's love is first, that God's mercy is first, and that it is this mercy that sets us back on our feet, that it is this mercy that makes us just and holy.

This is the whole discovery that Thérèse makes.

One day, she lacked patience with a sister who was already very ill, a sister who insisted—Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste—that Thérèse come and help her with some painting. Thérèse could not take it anymore, her prioress Mother Agnes intervened, saying: Thérèse really is ill, she is very tired… The other insisted, and Thérèse lost a little patience. Then Thérèse reproached herself for this lack of patience, seeing that it was a lack of charity, and then she went to find her prioress, who consoled her. She then met Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste, who finally apologized for having insisted so much. Then Thérèse returned to her cell and wrote this to her prioress:

As I returned to our cell, I wondered what Jesus thought of me, and immediately I remembered the words he once said to the adulterous woman: “Has anyone condemned you?…” And I, with tears in my eyes, replied: “No one, Lord… Neither my little Mother, image of your tenderness, nor my Sister St-Jean B., image of your justice, and I feel that I can go in peace, for you will not condemn me either!…” (LT 230 to Mother Agnes – May 28, 1897) This is the Christian experience, but it brings tears to Thérèse’s eyes: tears not only of repentance, but tears of recognition, tears of gratitude. How is it possible that I am so loved? How is it possible that this gratuitous love is given to me? There is only one word that truly expresses love, and that is “thank you.” Thank you, which means mercy. Thank you is a word that allows me to welcome the gift given to me, without wanting to pay for it in one way or another. The Christian penance that the Church invites us to live during the time of Lent is not to buy the fact of being saved; it is to express our gratitude because we have been saved in the death and resurrection of Jesus; and that, as we have forgotten a little, we must return to the Lord by choosing him first, and therefore saying: everything else is second and I leave it aside. It costs me, because I have become accustomed to enjoying the things of this world again, but let us not forget that we will die naked, we will die abandoning all our possessions and we will arrive in heaven rich only in the love that we will have given to God and to our brothers.

By showing mercy to the adulterous woman, Jesus opens before her a path of newness. This is what we heard in the first reading: “Do not remember the past or think about the things of old. Behold, I am doing something new; it is already sprouting, do you not see it?” The Lord, by his mercy, creates in us a path that is always new! We are constantly freed from the weight of our sins, but do we accept being relieved of the weight of our sins?

Guilt is a spontaneous action of our conscience when we have done wrong, but it is only an alarm system to alert us to the fact that there, we have done something that deserves to be looked at. Once I have identified that no, I have not done wrong, the question is over. Or if I have identified that yes, I have acted wrongly, it is for me to welcome the mercy of God who saves me, to abandon my sins to the Lord. If I can repair the wrong I have done, I must repair it. But I must not continue to let remorse destroy my heart: it is about welcoming something new and not allowing myself to be locked in my sin, but on the contrary, welcoming a salvation that allows me to change, to truly convert. The last words of Jesus to the adulterous woman are words both full of hope and at the same time, of demand: “Go, and from now on sin no more.”. But if the Lord can say to him: sin no more, it is because his mercy enables this woman to sin no more. God's mercy enables me to renounce sin. Why do I cling to my sins? It is because I do not love the Lord enough. And this is a grace to be asked for in prayer without ceasing: "Lord, grant me to love you more..." because the more I love the Lord Jesus, the more I could convert, that is, seek to do what pleases him, because it is love that will make us do great things; not duty, not the tension of the will, but love.

This is why Thérèse writes in this famous poem, Living on Love:

To live on Love is to banish all fear

Any remembrance of past faults.

Of my sins I see no trace,

In an instant love burned everything...

Divine flame, O most sweet Furnace!

In your hearth I fix my stay

It is in your fires that I sing at my ease:

“I live on Love!…” (PN 17§6)

It is a matter of entering into something new. Thérèse will write thus: Only charity can expand my heart. For this newness is precisely that charity is spread in our hearts, just as much as we welcome the mercy of God. Thérèse continues: O Jesus, since this sweet flame consumes him, I run with joy in the way of your new commandment - love one another as I have loved you - I want to run there until the blessed day when, uniting myself with the virginal procession, I will be able to follow you into infinite spaces, singing your new canticle which must be that of Love. (Ms C 16r°)

But perhaps you will say to me: Yes, but I cannot forget the faults I have committed. And besides, it is important that I remember them so that I can tell them at my next confession to the priest. Yes, of course.

But remembering my faults should not overwhelm me, cast me down, discourage me, but give me the opportunity to contemplate the mercy of the Lord. Even from this, Lord, you save me and you have loved me to the point where you save me even from this.

So, let us end with this extract from the letter to Abbé Béllière, in June 1897. Thérèse contemplates the sinful woman, whom she confuses with Mary Magdalene, in chapter 7 of Saint Luke, who comes to bathe Jesus' feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair at Simon the Pharisee's house. And she writes:

When I see Madeleine come forward before the numerous guests, watering with her tears the feet of her adored Master, whom she touches for the first time; I feel that her heart has understood the depths of love and mercy of the Heart of Jesus, and that, sinner as she is, this Heart of love is not only willing to forgive her, but also to lavish on her the benefits of its divine intimacy, to raise her to the highest peaks of contemplation.

Ah! My dear little Brother, since I have been given to understand the love of the Heart of Jesus, I confess to you that it has driven all fear from my heart. The memory of my faults humbles me, leads me never to rely on my strength which is only weakness, but even more this memory speaks to me of mercy and love.

How, when one throws one's faults with filial trust into the devouring fire of Love, how can they not be consumed irrevocably? (LT 247 to Abbé Bellière – June 21, 1897)

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine