Msgr. Beaulieu – Stooping and Standing

Straightening Up – Writing on the Ground

Seemingly mundane, the conversations Jesus often has with various people, such as the Woman Caught in Adultery and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, frequently involve Jesus asking questions that reveal a deeper truth. Since conversations are more concrete and direct, unlike parables, they show Jesus engaged with real, historical individuals. Those encounters eschew metaphors or figurative language and, for that very reason, they are lively exchanges that hit home more forcefully and immediately. When taken in their intended spiritual sense, the persons and events described in these drama-filled conversations can be understood as foreshadowing larger realities yet to come.

This is pre-eminently true in the exchange surrounding the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:1-11). The woman, signifying sinful humanity, is dragged into the midst of a hostile crowd. She is a woman in need of mercy, whereas her accusers demand justice. Constituting an impasse between justice and mercy, they ask Him, “So, what do you say?” There seems to be no way out for Jesus in the trap laid for Him. The horns of the dilemma are this: How can God both be just and yet merciful toward fallen human humanity? Yet, unexpectedly, something wonderful happens. Jesus bends down and begins to write in the earth. All this is done in silence.

What does it mean? St. Thomas Aquinas, with the keenness of his mystical insight, says that this action signifies that by doing so, in His mercy, God is stooping down to assist sinful humanity. In fact, Aquinas says, that whenever Jesus stoops down, doing so signifies an act of God’s mercy. Conversely, whenever Jesus stands up straight, such straightening up signifies an act of God’s justice.

The Greek word for justice literally means “uprightness.” It is etymologically related to what Jesus did standing upright (Gk. ἀνακύπτω). The word not only conveys the idea of standing up straight or looking up, both physically and spiritually, but the verb anakupto is used to encourage believers to be alert and hopeful, especially in anticipation of divine intervention or redemption. But what does the writing in the earth signify? Once again, Saint Thomas penetrates into the mystery. The Greek word there is katagraphein (Gk. κατέγραφεν). As a hapax legomenon, it appears only once in the New Testament, and that is in this passage. The expression kategraphen doesn’t exactly mean “write”—that would be grapho (Gk. γράφω), whereas katagraphein means “to write down into,” or simply “to engrave.”

The word does not appear anywhere else in the New Testament, though, it does appear in the Septuagint (LXX) or the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In that Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, the word is almost always used in relation to a single event, particularly, when God engraves the commandments with His finger on the tablets of stone. Inspired by that divine precedent, the Fathers of the Church say that, in this instance, Jesus is writing the commandments into the earth. When understood in its spiritual sense, says the Angelic Doctor, the action signifies the mystery of the Incarnation—when by the finger of God, the Holy Spirit, the eternal Word was written into our human nature, as Isaiah the prophet once wrote: “Let the heavens rain down the Just One and the earth bring forth a Savior.”

The earth is a fit symbol for human nature since that nature was taken from the earth. And all this is done in silence to signify the ineffability of this mystery. It is as if Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees: “Yes, according to Moses she ought to be condemned and stoned to death, but that was before mercy was available through the Incarnation. Therefore, there is now hope for sinners.” But the scribes and Pharisees do not understand the mystery, and they break the reverent silence with a cacophony of cries: they want justice, they want blood. And as they continued to harass Jesus, He stood up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” By straightening up, Jesus is now signifying His justice. They have asked for justice and justice they will receive, but now those who also stand are accused. Jesus does not deny that she deserves death, but He adds to this that so do those scribes and Pharisees.

This causes them to place themselves in the shoes of the accused. Perhaps they would have stoned her anyway if they did not think this would cause them to lose the favor of the crowds. Pride sometimes even feigns humility in order to achieve its aims. But what happens next? Jesus stoops down again, as if to offer mercy to the newly accused. This time He begins to write again, but the verb now used is graphein. He is not engraving, as earlier, but simply writing lightly in the earth. And the Fathers of the Church tell us that now Jesus is writing their sins, but lightly as if to indicate that these can be easily wiped away if only they will accept that they too need God’s mercy. By doing so, Jesus is revealing to the woman’s accusers that He knows their hidden sins too.

But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. The eldest was most aware of the sins of a long life, for he had “grown old in his sins” (Dan. 13:51). And therefore, faced with the undesirable decision to admit and confess his sins before the people, or for the eldest to remain in his feigned innocence, instead he flees from the mercy offered to him by Christ. And so it was with all the others, except the woman, who no longer had any claim to innocence since her sin had been made public.

What happens last of all? Jesus stands up again to render His just judgment, as He looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” Now, she too stands because she has been justified by the mercy of Christ, not because she was justified by her own merits. Hence, she hears this sentence — Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin no more.”

To recap the passage’s analogical sense: the adulterous woman represents sinful humanity because all humanity is in need of God’s mercy. The scribes and Pharisees signify those who accuse others, whether they be our sins or the demons. Jesus stooping down signifies God showing mercy. Jesus writing (or better engraving) in the earth the first time signifies the Holy Spirit irrevocably writing the word of God into the earth of our human nature at the moment of the Incarnation. Jesus standing up signifies God exercising justice. The woman standing alone at the end signifies humanity justified by God’s grace, now free from accusation and its attendant guilt.

http://www.shop.catholic.com. Fr. Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. “Mysteries Revealed: Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery.” 3 June 2020.