Relicti sunt duo, misera et misericordia: "There are but two left: affliction and mercy". With these words, St. Augustine masterfully comments on today's Gospel, the moment when everyone leaves and Jesus is left alone with the adulterous woman.
Dear brothers and sisters: Lent is coming to an end and the Church invites us to experience God's merciful love. Last Sunday we listened to the story of the Prodigal Son, and contemplated the goodness of our heavenly Father, who always forgives us, waits for us and receives us when we return to him. Today it is his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who appears as an example of compassion and tenderness towards sinners.
In his first letter, the Apostle John writes: "if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one." (1 Jn 2:1) This affirmation, which might seem a theoretical sophistry if it had no empirical proof, becomes a reality throughout the pages of the Holy Gospel. How often do we see the Lord take the side of sinners! He does it with the woman who anoints his feet, with Zacchaeus, with Matthew, with the Samaritans who did not welcome him, with his executioners at the cross, and today he does so with this poor woman who was about to be stoned.
It is a consoling reality: our brother Jesus protects us. When we sin, he stands before the Father and reminds him with his open wounds that he died for us. The Father contemplates us in his Son, and in his Son he loves us with infinite love. Last week I told you that each one of us was the younger son in the parable, and this evening I affirm that the woman who today is saved by the Lord is also each one of us. We too are sinners, we too, are in need of mercy, Christ our Lord also chooses us, we too are invited to sin no more and to experience the love of Jesus who redeems us.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is one thing to be forgiven by God, and another to experience God's forgiveness in a profound way. Many, perhaps the majority of Christians die without having this supernatural and almost mystical experience. Jesus loves me. He knows my sin. He has forgiven me and his forgiveness has opened the gates of heaven for me.
When you reach this experience, you become the happiest person in the world. You have found a love that heals every inch of your soul and fills the deepest corners of your heart with light and love. You are able to say with St. Paul in the words of the second reading " I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ " Your life becomes an adventure where only Jesus matters, where everything is filled with Jesus, where everything is Jesus. Your soul, which was a desert, is transformed by the water of grace and everything is meaningless if you cannot direct it towards the living person of Jesus Christ. St. Thérèse of Lisieux affirms that "what is not Jesus is nothing". Christ is your banner, your rest, your refuge and joy. You are never alone because, wherever you go, you carry with you your friend and beloved, your light and rest, your home, your peace and glory. Jesus is God made man who, to defend you, bears the burden of your sins and dies for you.
On my last pilgrimage, I was able to pray at the tomb of St. Angela in the Italian town of Foligno. Like the woman in today's Gospel, this Franciscan tertiary also once lived far from God. It is said that her conversion happened in this way. One day, arriving at her room after a feast full of worldliness and sin, she fell, in her rich dress, onto the mattress of her bed exhausted. As she turned, she noticed the image of Christ crucified, which hung on the wall of her room. She stared at it in silence, and miraculously Jesus spoke to her in these words: "Angela, I did not love you as a joke. I really love you, if only you loved me the same way!”
In the final days of this Lent, let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace to take the necessary steps to ask for and deeply experience the mercy of Jesus for us, to understand that Jesus did not love us as a joke, and that he thirsts to be loved in the same way. Truly everything is rubbish if it does not lead us to the Lord, and only if we choose the way of the cross, will we one day find peace and the joy of reconciliation, love, and eternal happiness.
