Undoubtedly the new Pope has already made a very good first impression; his humility, modesty and down-to-earth attitude have already won many hearts around the world. All those simple gestures have been so convincing because they are elements of his long kept lifestyle, not a publicity stunt. On the other hand, our excitement about those apparently obvious qualities of modesty and normality is deeply upsetting, because these seem to be such a rarity among religious leaders. Among many accusations against the Church is hypocrisy; and, as the recent events in Scotland have shown, the accusation is not completely groundless.
In today’s gospel we look at a well-known and emotionally moving scene, when Jesus saves an apparently doomed woman. Religious leaders accuse her of adultery, and it is quite likely that they can prove the accusation – we don’t see Jesus defending her innocence. At the end of that scene he says to the woman: ‘don’t sin any more’, which suggests that the accusation was true, and that Jesus definitely doesn’t approve adultery. So in this respect Jesus and the religious leaders have compatible views on adultery. Her guilt was indisputable.
The approach by Jesus and by the religious leaders makes the difference. We can imagine that moment when the woman is brought to Jesus, accompanied by loudly expressed disapproval and condemnation by her accusers, demanding her death to be delivered in a cruelly satisfying way by stoning her. Perhaps she was called a threat to the sound fabric of the local community, violating the immemorial and divine social order. Powerful and influential people have neither left space for her defence, nor been interested in her reasons. She wasn’t a human being in their eyes any more; she has become an incarnation of evil, and subsequently she must be severely punished.
Jesus’ reaction in fact reveals the accusers’ double standards: ‘if there is one of you who have not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ In my rather short life and even shorter career as a priest, I’ve done many things I’m ashamed of, and I wish they would never have happened. There’s nothing to be proud of; but all of them I’ve done because of my weakness, stupidity, ignorance or imperfection; I can’t recall anything I’ve done to hurt anybody willingly and purposefully. All those shameful incidents have made me sympathetic and understanding. I don’t assume anybody’s malevolence until I have solid and indisputable evidence of it. What I do assume is that most of the people most of the times do something wrong or evil for the same reasons as I do: their personal weakness, stupidity, ignorance or imperfection.
Jesus’ mission is clearly described in these words from St John’s gospel: ‘God didn’t send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ (John 3:16). This mission has been passed to the Church to carry it on throughout the generations. As the history clearly shows, it cannot be accomplished by an authoritarian, unsympathetic or inhumane approach, condemning whole groups of people or single individuals. These words of Jesus from today’s gospel: ‘Neither do I condemn you’ should be used on a daily basis to verify our own approach to everybody and anybody we meet in the course of our lives. Today’s battered world doesn’t need our condemnation. It craves for salvation, and from the Pope to the least one of us we can provide it by our sympathetic love.