HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR C
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 6 APRIL 2025
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.[1]
So says Macbeth after his wife’s descent into guilt, madness and suicide. His response to the harrowing news is surely one of literature’s greatest reflections on the futility of human life. How ever we live, long or short, nobly or wickedly, he thinks our existence no more than a blip on the radar, a “brief candle” soon to be extinguished. Each day brings us closer to annihilation and, when it’s all said and done, life and death are meaningless. No grand plan, no purpose, “signifying nothing”. Gradually corrupted, increasingly cynical, Macbeth’s nihilistic judgments are unworthy of our trust. But he’s right to insist that death eventually comes to us all…
But what comes next? Through much of history people feared a difficult passage through a shadowy and frightening afterlife, where accusers like those in today’s Gospel would bay for blood and exact terrible punishments (Jn 8:1-11). The gods of the ancients were at best moody or indifferent, but at worst severe judges who kept a tally of faults, cared nothing for repentance, and delighted in casting people into hell. To contemplate divine judgment was to recoil in fear.
Prophecies like today’s from Isaiah (Isa 43:16-21) stood in stark contrast to all that. The God of Israel is powerful, all-knowing, awesome; but He is also “rich in mercy and compassion” and forgives the repentant sinner (Ex 34:6; Ps 25:10; 86:15; 145:8; Mic 7:18-19; Eph 2:4-5). “No need to dwell on the past, no need to recall what was done before. See, I am doing something new.” Jesus is God-making-all-things-new (cf. Rev 21:5; Rom 6:4).
In our Gospel Jesus lifts up the accused woman and gives her back her dignity (Jn 8:1-11). He drives away her accusers with His doodling in the sand. In the end, as St Augustine put it so beautifully, “only two remained, Misery and Mercy”.[2] Mercy redeems Misery, of course, turning a new page for her. He speaks His wonderful words of absolution: “Has no one condemned you? Well, neither do I. Go in peace.”
What a relief this picture of God must have been to the ancients, this encounter with the Divine Pity in Jesus Christ.[3] How much must those who first heard St Paul have delighted in his message about the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus, being united to Him in His death and Resurrection, and so being redeemed (Phil 3:8-14).
But if the ancients wrestled with the pervasive reality of death, trembling at what might come next but relieved by the Christian Gospel, we moderns are more likely to ignore death altogether, led by the secular ‘gospel’ to expect death to be postponed indefinitely or hide it in an institution where we don’t have to see it. If our ancestors feared death meant judgment from an uncompromising, even capricious judge, modernity has gone to the other extreme, abandoning all sense of sin, judgment or deserts. The fire and brimstone God has been replaced by the therapeutic nice guy, who nods sympathetically to everything we say or do.
Our Gospel today shows both extremes are flawed. On the one hand, in extending the hand of mercy to the woman caught in adultery, Christ refuses to damn her as her accusers would. On the other hand, He respects her too much to join the chorus of modernity saying “she couldn’t help it” or “it doesn’t really matter what you do with your body” or “no one is really faithful”. Jesus says, “neither do I condemn you”, but he doesn’t follow up with “go now and sin some more”; rather He says, “sin no more”. It’s not that Jesus is a control freak, wanting to dictate the course of the woman’s life like her accusers. He thinks far more of her than they do, thinks far more of her than she does herself. He wants her to take responsibility for her actions. Sin, as Macbeth found, is a corrupting force that darkens the intellect and corrodes the will, turning us in on ourselves and towards destruction. To ignore it, excuse it, accept it, would be no act of love on God’s part or ours, but dereliction of duty.
Still, divine judgment, even from a just and merciful God, is a jarring thought, and like death something we’d rather not think about. Human judgment, on the other hand, comes easily to us. Even in this relativist age, human beings are inveterate finger pointers. We join the Pharisees in throwing stones at the over-sexed and the cheaters. We join Shakespeare’s audience in throwing fruit at the politicians and others. We’re much better at identifying other people’s faults than our own. We don’t ask what God might think about our deeds and character. Yet, like death itself, judgment is inescapable and perhaps we should fear it after all.
It’s fearsome, yet the doctrine of the particular and the general judgment (CCC 1021, 1038-41) is also good news. First, because it means we are not just ‘brief candles’ waiting to be blown out: we are made for eternity. Secondly, because it says our lives are not meaningless, “signifying nothing”: our actions have purposes and effects in this life and the next. Fairness and charity will be rewarded; treachery and cruelty will not. Pace Macbeth, life’s much more an idiot’s tale “full of sound and fury”. Thirdly, judgment means there is indeed good and bad, right and wrong, that it’s not just a matter of opinion or culture or feeling, that even God Himself cannot make bad good or good bad, but only render justice and mercy.
So our lives and deaths are not meaningless, and the God of truth and compassion wants us to appreciate the weight of personal responsibility and the relief of divine pity. This season, like today’s Gospel story, calls us to Confession: to face up to all we’ve done and become; to turn away from the dead-end of sin; to experience the healing power of the Sacrament; to be reconciled to God, neighbour and self; and to start afresh with Christ. Especially if you haven’t been for a long time, but even if you are more frequent, come to hear those wonderful words of Mercy spoken to Misery, of Christ spoken to your heart: “Neither do I condemn you. I absolve you of your sin. Go, and sin no more.”
[1] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, 22-26.
[2] Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John (trans. Edmund Hill, New York City Press, 2009), 528.
[3] See Gerald Vann, The Divine Pity (1945; republished by Scepter, 2007).
Introduction to Mass for the 5th Sunday of Lent, Year C – St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 6 April 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Basilica in Sydney for the Solemn Mass of the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Today we enter Passiontide, the final straight of Lent, when we join with Christ in Jerusalem and ready ourselves for the Holy Week of His Last Supper, Passion and Resurrection. As we draw ever closer to those salvific events, we ask Christ to take our sins with Him into the tomb so that we might rise free of them with Him at Easter.
