Monday of the Fifth Week in Lent
(Daniel 13:1-9.15-17.19-30.33-62; John 8:1-11)
The terms reformatory and penitentiary were popular in previous eras. They indicated a place where a juvenile delinquent or a criminal would learn how to behave well. Perhaps because of the difficulty of making this transformation, we generally speak of prisons today where criminals are more detained than rehabilitated. Still the purpose of justice is to justify, that is to rehabilitate and not to punish.
In the readings today Jesus proves himself to be a wiser administrator of justice than the sagacious Daniel because he justifies. Daniel is able to ferret out the truth in a case of malicious calumny. He reveals how two elders have lied about Susanna’s alleged adultery so that she was condemned to death. Jesus not only saves the woman caught in the act of adultery from a harsh punishment but also rehabilitates her. His judgment is as firm as it is clement. She must “’not sin any more.’”
Recalling Jesus’ justification of the woman at this late moment in Lent enables us to anticipate his justification of the world on Good Friday. Seeing Jesus as history’s only really innocent human hang on the cross, we are moved to admit complexity in the social web that condemned him. More than that, as recipients in the Eucharist of the blood flowing from Jesus’ wounds, our sins are forgiven and our spirits reinforced so that we may now live virtuously.
