5th Week of Lent (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Notre Dame Seminary, NOLA
So,
to continue these morning's lecture in homiletics. . .it's always
good homiletical practice when preparing a homily to ask: why does
this reading appear on this day in the lectionary
cycle? It might be where it is just by accident, but that's no reason
not to think about why it might be where it is. Why is the story of
the woman caught in adultery assigned to Monday of the 5th
Week of Lent Year A? Well, it's Lent, so we have an occasion to
reflect on the nature of sin. Palm Sunday is coming up, and we are
given a chance to ponder on the mercy Christ shows the woman, a
function of his Lordship. Easter is just two weeks away, and we're
given a chance to chew over whether or not we're exercising our own
kingship in Christ by showing mercy to those who have sin against us.
All good reasons. But focus for a moment on the sin involved in this
story: adultery. Here it's obvious that we're talking about
marital infidelity of a sexual nature. However, Scripture calls out
another sort of adultery, one we usually name “idolatry,” that
is, the infidelity we live when we worship smaller gods. This last
week of Lent is a chance for each one of us to stare w/o blinking
into our marital relationship with Christ and ask: am I committing
adultery?
Skip
over all the questions about who's the bride and who's the groom and
focus on the fidelity required to live out a fruitful marital bond.
If marriage is the sacramental sign of Christ's love for his bride,
the Church, then we know that fidelity to Christ and his mission must
come first. Whether we identify more closely with Christ the
Bridegroom, or with the Church, his Bride, we are still bound by a
love that radically alters every other relationship we might find
ourselves in. What every faithful married couple knows is that being
married is all about living the world of other-relationships in terms
of the marriage bond. Husband or wife come first. Before friends,
family, neighbors. Always first. To do anything less creeps toward
adultery. Maybe not actual sexual infidelity, but something
potentially worse: spiritual infidelity. Christ loves the
Church, and the Church loves Christ. All other loves are ordered to
this spiritual architecture. If another love intervenes, if another
love takes precedence, then the sacramental witness of the marriage
is threatened by idolatry, the love of smaller gods. The threat to
the individual who is wedded to Christ is hardly less serious.
Spend
this last week of Lent asking yourself: as I committing adultery?
That is, am I loving something or someone before I love Christ? To
put it another way: am I loving Christ in terms of another love, a
smaller love? What might this look like? We have all the traditional
suspects: pride, lust, wrath, envy, etc. We also our more modernist
sins: racism, careerism, celebrity. And on top of these we have the
postmodernist sins: techno-addiction, combox vigilantism, Facebook
exhibitionism-voyeurism, and cyber-rumor mongering. We could throw in
a couple of hundred more, but they all lead down the same dank and
dreary path: spiritual adultery. If you find that you are indeed
committing adultery, think back to the woman Jesus rescues from the
righteous mob. There should be no one around to throw the first stone
b/c not one of us is w/o sin. It should be just you and Christ in the
sacrament and him saying to you, “Go and sin no more.” As many
times as it takes to take hold, “Go and sin no more.” When our
fidelity to him fails, his fidelity to us only strengthens. And he is
strong enough to get us to Easter. Not just this coming Easter. But
all the way to Easter on the last day.
_____________________
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