Our first extract is taken from The Book of Consolation. The Babylonian exile is at an end and the history of the earlier deliverance from Egypt is recalled. God's mighty deeds delivered their ancestors. But the poet then abruptly breaks off from his reminiscing; "No need to recall the past; no need to think about what was done before." He appeals to his people to forget the past and to look to the future. "See, I am doing a new deed." People who have suffered greatly are faced with two options: either to wallow in past misery, to pick over the carcasses of injustice, or to take up the reins again and to begin life anew. Prisoners of the past have no future. Sinners who are obsessed with their past will fail to see "the new thing" God is doing.
In our gospel reading today, we have another very famous story which illustrates once again the attitude of Jesus to sinners and to the old law. The Scribes and the Pharisees in order to entrap Jesus, have no qualms about exposing a woman to public humiliation. They will use her for their own legalistic ends, regardless of the consequences for her. If a person and her dignity must be sacrificed for the sake of the law, so be it. So they brought along this woman caught in the act of committing adultery.
The old law laid down that such sinners must die by stoning. But this law, while it remained on the statute books, had fallen into disuse for generations back. So the question was an academic one, intended only to catch him out. Jesus then turns the tables on her -and his- accusers: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The self-righteous are confronted with their own sinfulness. Jesus, left alone now with the woman, refuses to condemn her. Like much of John's gospel, the scene is symbolic: in the final shake-out, Jesus will be found standing in solidarity with sinners. And he is 'doing a new thing' in the life of the woman. She need not remain a prisoner of her past life. Jesus tells her to go on her way and not sin again. She has been liberated. She gets another chance, a chance that the Old Law would not have afforded her.
The contrast between the old law of Moses and the New Law of Jesus is obvious. In the dispensation of Jesus, the sinner, not the law is given primacy. Paul elaborates on this theme in our second reading today. As a Jew, he would have had personal experience of striving for perfection through observance of the law. He now sees this as so much rubbish. The only perfection worth striving for is the perfection that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.
In the not too distant past, the Catholic Church made the same mistake as the scribes and Pharisees. We relied far too heavily upon law -canon law, Church law, even the Ten Commandments- as a vehicle of perfection. The results were catastrophic on a number of levels. An obsession with personal guilt obscured the reality of God's forgiveness. This atmosphere produced generations of scrupulous, anxious people, people who, with the best intentions in the world, knew in their hearts that they could not live up to the exacting demands of a mind-boggling maze of laws, rules and regulations.
In these days of greater personal freedom, many still resent the spiritual terrorism the blighted their young lives. The real survivors were those who had the sense and the strength to ignore them. The forgiving figure of Jesus was hopelessly obscured by this obsessive legalism. Like St. Paul, true freedom is found in an acceptance of the fact that we are in pilgrimage to Christ and perfection. We have not yet arrived, as the law would presume. With Paul, the sinner will forget the past and strain ahead for what is yet to come. In this direction lies true repentance, divine forgiveness, and real resurrection.
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