5th SUNDAY LENT (C)	“FIRST IMPRESSIONS” FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT -C- April 6, 2025 Isaiah 43: 16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3: 8-14; John 8: 1-11 By: Jude Siciliano, OP	Printer Friendly
(Check the Archive for upcoming and past reflections.)

During this Sunday there are options for two sets of readings. If a parish has catechumens and people preparing for full communion at the Easter Vigil, the parish may choose to use the readings from the A Cycle. We have posted reflections for the A cycle on our webpage.  Go to: LENT YearA

Dear Preachers:

There aren’t many more dramatic stories in the bible than today’s gospel. The story starts well. John tells us Jesus comes to the temple in the morning. The mood is set: a new day’s light enters the holy place. Jesus takes a seat, the traditional posture of a teacher. To make the point clearer John even spells it out for us, Jesus “taught them.” At first glance the teaching seems interrupted. We wonder if we will ever get to hear what he had to teach them. But of course, the teaching is the unfolding story and we who hear it anew today are anxious to learn what teaching Jesus has for us.

The scribes and Pharisees considered themselves the official religious teachers. We meet the Pharisees frequently in these stories; they are the scrupulous practitioners of the religious observance and the scribes are the legal experts. Men from these two groups bring the woman to Jesus and present him with a dilemma. If he went along with the religious law (e.g. Lev. 20:10, Deut. 22: 13-24) he would lose his reputation for mercy and as one who had welcomed sinners. He would also anger the Romans, since the Jewish people could not impose the death penalty. On the other hand, if Jesus pardoned the woman, he would be accused of breaking the Mosaic law; and more, he might have been seen as one who condones adultery.

The modern reader detects other factors in the story. At a recent scripture reflection with a group of parishioners, we read this story and no sooner had the reading and a minute of silent reflection ended than a woman spoke up, “Where’s the guy? It takes two to tango. I bet those men let him go!” (Another reason, when possible, for the preacher to get varied input on a passage: a chance to hear the scriptures from another perspective.) We noted that the woman isn’t even named. For the accusers, the woman is just a shameless “case in point” to be used as an instrument to trap Jesus. But God wants no person used, treated as a thing. Remember that in Genesis, humans were created by God and in God’s image and likeness, animated by God’s breath/Spirit. The learned religious leaders failed to see God’s image and breath in the one they called “this woman.”

For the charge of adultery to stick, two men and only men, would have had to be witnesses. What a humiliating situation for the woman; made to stand in public before a crowd of accusers and, I am sure, curious spectators. The cards are stacked against her. I think of some people on death row I know who were too poor to afford good lawyers, have spent years on the row hoping to get someone to review their case, pay for DNA tests, move their appeals process along, etc. The woman was guilty, all that was left was for her execution to be carried out. The woman’s fate is sealed, yet I am struck by the opening lines of the Isaiah reading: God “opens a way in the sea, and a pathway in the mighty waters....” The allusion, of course, is to the exodus from Egypt. God’s people were in vise-like grip, trapped with no future. But God “opened a way” for them. The prophet reminds his contemporaries caught in a new slavery, this time in Babylon, that their God can do again what God did for them once before—free them from bondage, get them out of an impossible bind.

Isaiah tells the people they should look back to what God once did for them and see it, not as something that just happened long ago, but to trust that God can do it again. In fact, their looking to their past will not have to be with a nostalgia to events that are only a distant memory. God will act again on their behalf. “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The woman is in the bind Israel was in and she too needs to be let out of a trap. God needs to do “something new” for her.

So often people will say, as they reflect on a past crisis or difficult time, “I would never have gotten through that had God not helped me and given me strength!” We look back at what seemed impossibly difficult and only later, after we passed through the period of trial, see the hand of God helping us. Psalm 23, everyone’s favorite, I bet, describes that strong guiding presence as “your rod and staff.” Well, Isaiah also invites us to remember how God stood with us and to trust that in whatever bind we currently are in or will get into at a future time, that God’s help will “spring forth.” In fact, look closer, Isaiah invites, God is already doing something for you—even in the “wasteland.”

Wasn’t this true for the woman caught in adultery? She was in the wasteland of guilt and surrounded by Isaiah’s “jackals” who wanted her end. Even more, she was just being used to trap Jesus. She must have felt terribly alone; but we believers can see what she did not--- in her wasteland God was “doing something new.” Jesus was with her. The scriptures don’t tell us what Jesus was writing on the ground. Throughout history there have been guesses by biblical scholars and the pious. Whatever he wrote is not the point. But from his silent moment came a word that, like the creative word God spoke in the beginning of Genesis, shattered the darkness with God’s light and creative power.

John’s gospel has strong ties to Genesis. The first book starts with the creation account. John’s gospel opens in a similar way, “In the beginning....” John is showing that Jesus is the Word and wisdom of God, recreating a broken and sinful humanity. Isaiah reminds us that throughout the history of God’s people, God was always at work in the process of recreation. God is always ready to forgive us the sin that defaces the Creator’s image in us and make of us a new creation, free from sin’s destructive control. This forgiveness and new life is what the woman experienced at Jesus’ word.

Maybe we have been successful in our chosen Lenten observance—or not. Taking our cue from today’s readings, we are stirred to a Lenten prayer of thanksgiving at this Eucharist. The psalm response to the first reading sets the tone for our prayer today. Even as we remember the great deeds God has done for us, we take Isaiah’s advice and move our gaze from the past to the present—and then to the future. As we look back and see the hand of God at moments of need and reflect on the saving work God did for us in Jesus’ life, we can say, with the psalmist, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.” We are thankful that God was there for us when we were “captives,” when we sowed “in tears” and when we reaped a harvest of “rejoicing” (Psalm 126). And in our prayer of thanksgiving we also express the firm hope that God will lead us out of any barren place we now or in the future will experience.

How could Isaiah have known that the “something new” God had planned for us was Jesus? Today’s gospel shows how he was the oasis for the woman in her wasteland. Jesus makes a new way of living God’s law possible, not by relying on external rules and observances, but on the Spirit’s new life given us at baptism—our “rivers in the wasteland.” Jesus set the woman free from the trap of her accusers as well as from her sin, “Neither do I condemn you, from now on do not sin any more.” As with the woman, so with us, Jesus frees us from our past sin, reanimates God’s image in us and sets us free and now able to overcome sin. The woman was as good as dead, but was given new life through his freeing word. So it is with us this Lent, we stand aware of our sins before God and Jesus’ word frees us to live a new life—Isaiah was right, God has done “a new thing” for us.

Click here for a link to this Sunday’s readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040625-YearC.cfm

QUOTABLE

JUSTICE BULLETIN BOARD

See, I am doing something new!

—Isaiah 43:19

I always love this passage. How often do we go through our day not realizing that each day is a day unlike any other day. God shouts in each rising sun, “See, I am doing something new!” And this is certainly true with the diversity we see in God’s creation.

I wonder what God must think regarding how we are taking care of the Garden given to us to tend as our first job in Genesis? Fifty-four years ago, the World Synod of Catholic Bishops had some very specific thoughts about the environment in their document, Justicia in Mundo (Justice in the World). Fifty-four years ago , they wrote: “People are beginning to grasp a new and more radical dimension of unity; for they perceive that their resources, as well as the precious treasures of air and water--without which there cannot be life-- and the small delicate biosphere of the whole complex of all life on earth, are not infinite, but on the contrary must be saved and preserved as a unique patrimony belonging to all human beings (8). Are we grasping this fifty-four years later?

Stop by the tables in the narthex to join the Works of Mercy ministries that seek to care for our common home and prayer groups doing spiritual works of mercy:

Laudato Si Circle/Creation Care - Parishioners gather monthly in a small group format by Zoom to tackle the crisis of neglecting the earth through prayer, education, and action. Coordinator—Monica Kleimeyer

Greener Lent - The program encourages individuals and groups to reduce or abstain from meat to promote spiritual and environmental well-being. Contact at Cathedral--Monica Kleimeyer

NC Catholics Caring for our Common Home – A diocesan network to mobilize all NC Catholics to act more to care for the earth and all its inhabitants through prayer, reflection, and action using the goals of the Laudato Si encyclical. Coordinator—Barbara Quinby

Spiritual Works of Mercy -Prayer is essential to a walk with God and very needed when engaged in the work of building a better world:

1. Just Pray-ers—Barbara Quinby
2. The Reflecting Pool—Lauren Green
3. Lectio Divina —Anne Werdel
4. Traveling Statues—Monica Kleimeyer

Prison Ministry --Parishioners are trained to participate with prisoners in prayer services at the prison. Coordinator—Sandy Peace
Help make things new!

Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director

Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC

FAITH BOOK

Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.

From today’s Gospel reading:

Then Jesus said to the woman,
“Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on,
do not sin any more.”

Reflection:

One can imagine that hearing the Word of God, which did not condemn the woman, but set her free, might also have been a word that renewed and enabled her to start a new life. What effect would it have on us if we knew we had done wrong and were ready to be harshly and justifiably judged – and weren’t? Would we feel that “the finger of God” had touched and freed us so we could start all over?

So, we ask ourselves:

• Do we remember something someone said to us that deeply affected us and made a change in our lives?

• Is there a word we need to speak to someone that will set them free?

POSTCARDS TO DEATH ROW INMATES

“One has to strongly affirm that condemnation to the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates personal dignity, in whatever form it is carried out."

---Pope Francis

Inmates on death row are the most forgotten people in the prison system. Each week I am posting in this space several inmates’ names and locations. I invite you to write a postcard to one or more of them to let them know that: we have not forgotten them; are praying for them and their families; or, whatever personal encouragement you might like to give them. If the inmate responds, you might consider becoming pen pals.

Please write to:

• Jeremy D. Murrell #0940436 (On death row since 2/17/2006)

• Darrell Maness #0831753 (4/4/2006)

• Ryan M. Garcell #0775602 (4/4/2006)

----Central Prison P.O. 247 Phoenix, MD 21131

Please note: Central Prison is in Raleigh, NC., but for security purposes, mail to inmates is processed through a clearing house at the above address in Maryland.

For more information on the Catholic position on the death penalty go to the Catholic Mobilizing Network: http://catholicsmobilizing.org/resources/cacp/

On this page you can sign “The National Catholic Pledge to End the Death Penalty.” Also, check the interfaith page for People of Faith Against the Death Penalty: http://www.pfadp.org/

DONATIONS

“First Impressions” is a service to preachers and those wishing to prepare for Sunday worship. It is sponsored by the Dominican Friars. If you would like “First Impressions” sent weekly to a friend, send a note to fr. John Boll, OP at jboll@opsouth.org.

If you would like to support this ministry, please send tax deductible contributions to fr. Jude Siciliano, O.P.:

St. Albert Priory
3150 Vince Hagan Drive
Irving, Texas 75062-4736

Make checks payable to: Dominican Friars.

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https://www.PreacherExchange.com/donations.htm

RESOURCES

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If you are a preacher, lead a Lectionary-based scripture group, or are a member of a liturgical team, these CDs will be helpful in your preparation process. Individual worshipers report they also use these reflections as they prepare for Sunday liturgy.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS Archive

(The latest are always listed first.)

• Lent-5th Sunday (A) •
• Lent-5th Sunday (C) •
• Lent-4th Sunday (A) •
• Lent-4th Sunday (C) •
• Lent-3rd Sunday (A) •
• Lent-3rd Sunday (C) •