5th Sunday of Lent 2022 – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church, Burns, Oregon, and Missions; April 3, 2022

Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

Last week, we heard about God’s mercy in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the same theme is continued in today’s account of the woman caught in adultery. Together with the common theme of God’s mercy is the mercy we should show towards the sinner, not condemning him (like the Prodigal Son’s older brother or like the Pharisees condemning the adulteress) but rejoicing in his conversion. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. (Lk 15:7)

We must learn to share this attitude of heavenly joy in the conversion of the sinner, but since we are also sinners, we must ourselves follow the path of repentance and conversion. Likewise me must take to heart the final words of our Lord to the woman caught in adultery. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

I like to think that both the Prodigal Son and the woman caught in adultery learned their lesson.

The Prodigal Son, having recovered the great good of being a son in his father’s house, having finally learned to value that good, took care never again to insult his father, never again to fail him, never again to leave his house. For us we need to remember and value the great good of sanctifying grace, first received in baptism, which makes us truly to be sons in the house of our heavenly Father, sharing the life of the true and only Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior.

As for the woman caught in adultery, the combination of the humiliation she experienced when she was dragged out in public, dragged before Jesus, then defended and forgiven by Jesus, must have made quite an impact upon her. I think she took to heart his final words and took care not to fall back into sin.

Alas, I have had the sad awareness that people do fall back into this very sin.

Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

People fail here both because of the weakness of the flesh and because they fail to take the proper measures to change their life. Three things are necessary here: avoiding the occasion of sin, practicing virtue, and coming to share the attitude of St. Paul who considered everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

The woman caught in adultery began to know Jesus Christ when he said to her, Neither do I condemn you. We gain a similar knowledge of him whenever we make a good confession and receive absolution. This is a beginning. We must then go and sin no more, forgetting the sin that lies behind and straining to the good that lies ahead. In the matter of sins of the flesh, people are often too nice because breaking with the occasion of sin means breaking a friendship, means avoiding altogether, or as much as possible the former partner in sin.

We must consider that in this matter the words of our Lord very much apply, If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Mt 5:28-30)

Jesus is talking here about the determination we need in order to cut off the occasion of sin, especially in the matter of sins of the flesh. In this matter, the occasion of sin is often a person who must be cut out of our life. Niceness is not charity. No, you can’t ‘just be friends’. When another person leads you into sin it is charity also to that person to cast that person from your life.

This principle extends beyond just sins of the flesh. Parents know that they need to keep their children away from ‘bad companions’, ‘bad influences’. These influences can lead the children to things like drinking and drugs, or they can lead them to bad ideas and habits.

As adults, we need to know our own weaknesses and watch out over ourselves in the same fashion. Jesus dined with sinners, but he did so to win them over to righteousness and truth and there was no danger of his being corrupted by them. We need to be honest with ourselves: are we exerting a good influence on another person, perhaps winning them over for Christ, or are we letting ourselves be influenced in a bad way?

Now, when it comes to sins of the flesh, the intermediary, the ‘occasion of sin’, these days is often a computer, laptop, tablet, or cell phone. The very thought should fill one – and often does – with horror or disgust. Yet, for all the self-loathing these sins cause, people have a hard time breaking with them and one reason is the lack of determination to break with the occasion of sin. The addiction to the electronic device has become an occasion for a much worse addiction, but to break the worse addiction it is necessary to break the addiction to the electronic device. Insofar as the electronic device remains necessary, then one must accept supervision and accountability in its use.

People fall back into sin because they fail to avoid the occasion of sin, but they also fall back into sin because they fail to develop solid virtue. The 19th century English priest, Fr. Frederick Faber, wrote of the need for “long patient perseverance in the humbling practices of solid virtue.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, in accord with 2,000 years of Tradition, “A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows a person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself.” (CCC 1803) Through the prophet Isaiah God said, Cease to do evil, learn to do good. (Is 1:16-17) Family life should be a school of virtue.

There is one virtue in particular that, especially when it is fortified by the fear of the Lord, helps preserve us from evil; the virtue of temperance, which includes chastity, moderation in food, sobriety in drinking, but also modesty in dress, speech, and manners. Temperance is a lesser virtue that is a precondition for greater virtues. Training in temperance is a large reason for the traditional Lenten discipline – which has now been reduced to practically nothing – of fasting and abstinence. To put the matter very simply, we need to learn not to indulge ourselves, to rein in our desire for pleasurable enjoyments of all kind, to strengthen our will power, and so master ourselves. Without the self-mastery of temperance we can hardly learn to do good.

Doing good to others, consistently, does not come easy. Here to we must to learn to train ourselves. To do good to others we need first of all the virtue of justice, which is the constant and perpetual will to give to everyone their due. Then we need to acquire the virtues by which we give due respect and obedience to legitimate authorities, by which we are both truthful and discreet in our speech, affable in our interaction with others, generous with our money and other material goods, attentive to the needs of others, thoughtful, considerate, patient and forgiving. We can do none of this unless we possess the virtue of humility that frees us from preoccupation with our own ego and enables us also to ask for forgiveness and accept correction and guidance. We also need the prudence that recognizes the right time and place and what is fitting for each occasion, that knows what virtue to practice, when and how. Nor should we neglect the virtue of fortitude, the courage which is capable overcoming every obstacle and does not back down in the face of evil. Without this cohort of virtues, we cannot fulfill the Lord’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves. At the same time, the more we commit ourselves to the practice of what is true, right, and good, the more the temptation to the grosser sins will recede from the horizon of our life.

The acquisition of virtue requires dedicated effort accompanied by insistent prayer. We must not rely on our own strength but beg God for the help we need to turn away from evil and practice good. We need also to turn to the saints, above all Mary and Joseph, to look at the example of virtue they give us in all the circumstances and manners of life, and to ask their intercession that we might grow in the virtues they exemplified.

In all of this, the great engine, the driving force, the motive must be the love of Jesus Christ. In all things we must seek to know Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary and inseparable from her, present to us now most of all in the Holy Eucharist, in the Mass and in the tabernacle. A devout and worthy holy communion offers us the greatest possibility in this life for the deep and intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ.

In the measure that we know and love Jesus Christ it will be easy for us to turn away from sin and practice virtue. The greater love must conquer the lesser loves that lead us astray. On the other hand, if we seek virtue apart from Jesus Christ, if we seek virtue by our merely human effort and for our personal goals, we might accomplish something, but in the end we will go astray and come to ruin; in the end the noblest human effort, apart from the grace of God, is subject to what we could call the ‘spiritual law of gravity’, it falls back to earth.

The life of the saints shows us the pursuit toward to the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus. The rest of history shows us the ruin and destruction left by those who are subject to the spiritual law of gravity. 

So let us seek to share the sufferings of Christ by being conformed to his death, if somehow we might attain the resurrection of the dead. Let us press on forgetting what lies behind and straining to what lies ahead, for through our baptism Jesus Christ has taken possession of us and claimed us as his own.