Fifth Sunday of Lent
One
of the hardest things to do when you’re running a sprint in track is not to
look back to see who is coming up behind you. No matter whether you’re first and you want to see if anyone
is gaining on you, or you just don’t want to be last, as you’re running those
last meters, you want to know if you’re going to win, or if you need to push it
harder. Ironically, for most
people who look back, they seal their fate and the other person often passes
them, because looking back slows us down.
Isaiah
talks about it in our first reading.
He says for the Lord, “Remember not the events of the past, the things
of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!” God tells the Israelites not to dwell
on what led them into exile (their idolatry, their trust in foreign nations),
but to look ahead and see the good that God wants them to accomplish.
St. Paul
talks about that in our second reading today: “forgetting what lies behind but
straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul certainly had stuff that he could have dwelt on in
his past. He was a zealous
Pharisee; he arrested men, women, and children for following Jesus; he condoned
the stoning of Stephen. But, while
he did not forget his past, he didn’t keep looking back to it to weigh him
down. He recognized he was the
least of the apostles because he had persecuted the Church of God, but he used
that to propel his missionary activity, and is still the greatest missionary the
world has ever known.
We
see it in our Gospel passage today.
Jesus doesn’t ignore the woman’s past. He doesn’t condone the fact that she was caught in adultery. But He forgives her, and tells her to
move on, to “‘Go, and…do not sin any more.’” He does not want her past to determine her future, unlike
the scribes and Pharisees, who want to end her future because of her past.
When
we focus too much on our past, we lose our future, just like the sprinter who
can lose the race because he looks behind him. We all have a past, we all have things that we wish we would
not have done: not just mistakes or accidents, but choices that we have made
that we should not have. It’s
called being human. Look at St.
Peter: he denied that he even knew Jesus.
But he didn’t stay there.
He repented, he wept for his sins, and he reaffirmed his love for
Jesus. Look at St. Mary Magdalene:
she had seven demons that Jesus had to cast out of her. We don’t know exactly how they got
there, but it wasn’t a pleasant past. But she didn’t stay stuck on the fact that she had seven
demons, she followed Jesus, even to the cross when all but one of the other
apostles abandoned Jesus, and was able to be the first to see the risen Christ. And that’s just the beginning! Through the millennia, there have been
saints who had serious sins in their past. But they, like St. Paul, forgot what was behind them, and
continued their pursuit towards the goal of union with God forever in heaven.
“But
Fr. Anthony, you don’t know what I’ve done!” Or, “Maybe I haven’t done any one thing that was really bad,
but I’ve got a whole lifetime of little bad things that sure add up!” Please! Don’t give your sins that power. None of them are so heinous as to be unforgiveable. Bring them to the Lord and let Him nail
those sins to the wood of the cross so that new life can come from our death to
sin and life in Christ. What
happens when we do give our sins that power, when we remain stuck in the past,
is what happened to Judas: despair and death. Judas could not turn away from his past and turn towards the
Lord, and so could not receive the forgiveness that he wanted and needed.
Now,
in not looking back, it certainly does not mean that we do not learn from our
past sins. God wanted Israel to
look ahead to the future, to see the blessings of fidelity to God, but He
certainly didn’t want them to slip back into their old sins. St. Paul continued to run the race and
look ahead to the prize of salvation, but he didn’t think that he could just go
back to being a Pharisee and persecutor of the Church because he had been
forgiven. And Jesus exhorted the
woman not to be adulterous in the future.
Not looking back doesn’t mean that we forgo true conversion and treat
our sins as if they do not offend God.
They do offend God, and harm whom we are called to be. But they are not more powerful than
God, and God can write straight even with crooked lines.
The
same happens in reconciliation. We
don’t pretend we haven’t done anything wrong. Rather, we confess our sins, acknowledging how we have turned
away from the Lord, and then He forgives us and urges us to press on towards Him
and the road to salvation, that straight and narrow road that Jesus spoke of in
the Gospel. But just as we don’t
pretend we haven’t sinned, we also don’t let our sins bog us down afterwards,
because God has forgiven them.
Don’t
be the sprinter who loses the race because you looked back and were overtaken
by the past. Win the race by
learning from past sins and pressing onwards toward God, keeping Him always
before your eyes.
