Vatican City - Jesus teaches us "to be uncompromising with sin – starting with our own! - and lenient with people". The Gospel story of the adulteress and was raised today by Benedict XVI as a lesson on the sense of divine justice for the over 20 thousand people in St Peter's Square for the Sunday Angelus.
The scene described in the Gospel, the pope said, "is full of drama: the life of the woman but also this own depend on the words of Jesus. The hypocrite accusers, indeed, pretend to trust judgement to him, when in fact he is precisely the one they want to accuse and judge. Jesus, however, is 'full of grace and truth' (Jn 1:14) He knows what is in the heart of every man, he wants to condemn sin, but to save the sinner, and expose hypocrisy. St. John the Evangelist gives prominence to a particular detail: as the prosecutors question him insistently, Jesus bends down and begins to write with his finger on the ground. St. Augustine remarks that the gesture shows Christ as the divine legislator: in fact, God wrote the law with his finger on tablets of stone (cf. Comm on the Gospel of John., 33, 5). Jesus is the Legislator and Justice in person. And what is his verdict? 'He who is without sin cast the first stone at her'. "
"God wants only good and life for us: He ensures the health of our soul through his ministers, freeing us from evil with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so that none perish but all to come to repentance".
"We learn from the Lord Jesus - he concluded - not to judge and not to condemn others, to be uncompromising with sin – starting from our own! - And lenient with people. "
"These words - said the Pope - are full of disarming force of truth, which brings down the wall of hypocrisy and opens minds to a greater justice, that of love, which is the fulfilment of every precept (cf. Romans 13:8-10). "
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