Just a word before we go...Fifth Sunday of Lent...April 3, 2022
How many of us would like to be judged by our behavior in our weakest moments? To be hauled out in front of others, ridiculed and taunted? The unnamed woman in our gospel today was surrounded by self-righteous bullies, and set before the teacher to be condemned. But, Jesus, aware of their motives, beats them at their own game. Instead of shaming the woman, Jesus, with the finger of God, writes twice on the ground, challenges the crowd’s own innocence, causing them to disperse in shame. This leaves only the woman and Jesus, misery meeting mercy, in the words of St. Augustine.
The crowd was enforcing the system of justice that was their culture’s way of dealing with sin. Jesus turns that system on its head, letting the past be the past, and forgiving the woman, freeing her to move forward to new life. “See, I am doing something new, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” as Isaiah tells us. Jesus refused to hold the woman in her sin, knowing that conversion is not achieved by throwing stones or by castigating, but by giving and accepting love. Something new, indeed.
God is always doing something new; we need only develop the eyes to see it. In our own parish, we have much that is and will be springing forth. Today, I am speaking in particular about the Labyrinth project. Many years ago, parishioner Liz Short Ramsey designed the labyrinth garden as her Master’s project at Columbia University and presented the plans to Fr. John. The plans sat for a time, but with Fr. John’s untimely death as the impetus, the project became a way to remember him while beautifying this parish he loved so much. He had hoped that the labyrinth would be a place of prayer and contemplation, for the parish and beyond. And so it will be. When the landscaping is completed, hopefully in a month or two, the appeal of the labyrinth will become even more apparent, and will attract those who seek a peaceful, meditative spot.
But there’s more...remember the convent that stood where the labyrinth is now? It was beyond repair and was torn down several years ago. At that time, Fr. John asked a parishioner to keep the cross that had adorned the roof of the front porch of the convent, for some future use. Bob Sabre did just that, never dreaming that one day that cross would become the centerpiece of the labyrinth that has now been constructed. Fr. John is smiling!
“See, I am doing something new, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” As we move ever closer to the Triduum, the holy days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter, let us not hold onto our weakest moments or those of another, but forgive ourselves and others, Let us sharpen our eyesight that we might perceive the something new that God has waiting for us all.