EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is reprinted from a series of Lenten homilies given by Bishop Edward K. Braxton to seminarians at St. Joseph Seminary in the Archdiocese of New York in 1987. They were later compiled into a book entitled “Saint Augustine of Hippo: A Man for All Seminarians.” Although prepared for men studying for the priesthood in mind they offer to all of us points to consider in our own vocations.
Scripture Readings: Dn. 13: 1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62
Jn. 8: 1-11
“Let the man among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone at her.”
Considerable critical acclaim but little popular recognition, have greeted the works of Louisiana novelist Walker Percy. Many scholarly analysts in the literary world, however, believe that Percy may be the best Catholic novelist of our time. One could use his novels as a point of departure for a course on Catholic theology or for an exploration of the decline of spirituality in what Alexander Solzhenitsyn has called the exhausted West. For his vision is not only rigorously Catholic, it is splendidly, uproariously catholic, as well.
Walker Percy’s books unabashedly tackle the themes of modern man’s abandonment of faith in God and the widespread rejection of the spiritual dimension of the human person. As a result, in Percy’s view, many people now worship at the altars of science, technology and sociology. His novels are thus preoccupied with sin, perdition, forgiveness, redemption, grace and free will.
In Percy’s most recent work, The Thanatos Syndrome, something of a sequel to Love in the Ruins, there is a passage in which the central character, Dr. Tom More, an indirect descendant of Sir Thomas More, is asked a rhetorical question by a priest, his friend, Father Smith: “Do you know why this century has seen such terrible events happen? The priest proceeds to enumerate some of these events. “The Turks killing two million Armenians, the Holocaust, Hitler killing most of the Jews in Europe, Stalin killing fifteen million Ukrainians, nuclear destruction unleashed, the final war inevitable?” Father Smith then answers his own question. “It is because God agreed to let the Great Prince Satan have his way with men for a hundred years – this one hundred years, the twentieth century. And he has. How did he do it? No great evil scenes, no demons – he’s too smart for that. All he had to do was leave us alone. We did it. Reason warred with faith. Science triumphed. The upshot? One hundred million dead.”
All Satan had to do was leave us alone. We did it ourselves. This may have been equally true in past ages as well. While we cannot bring about our salvation, our free will allows us to choose our damnation.
Percy’s themes of free will, sin, forgiveness and eventual redemption are the turning point of the scriptures we have just heard. In the story of Susanna, the elders who lusted after her and tried to force her to be unfaithful to her husband, Joakim, are ultimately trapped and destroyed by their own lies. The decision to lie is the result of their own free will. The elders, in the gospel, who would stone the woman caught in adultery are reminded of their own past free choices to sin. (“Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.”) They have the good sense to walk away. Both of these biblical stories are told with a narrative force and integrity that far surpasses most popular novels and primetime television programs which often, unfortunately, treat marital infidelity in a manner that implies a total lack of moral responsibility for our free choices.
St. Augustine of Hippo, who 1600 years ago today was but a few days before his Easter Baptism, examined this question of free will, sin and forgiveness in the context of the classical debate on grace and freedom. A crucial part of his complex thought is summarized by Pope John Paul in his Apostolic letter. “While defending liberty one can give the impression of denying grace and vice versa. One must therefore believe in their compatibility just as one must believe in the compatibility of the two entirely necessary offices of Christ, who is at once savior and judge, for it is on these two offices that freedom and grace depend: ‘If then God’s grace does not exist, how does he save the world? And if free will does not exist, how does he judge the world?’” (cf. Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on Augustine of Hippo, Origins, p. 288)
Augustine enfleshes this tension between grace and freedom in his writings in The Confessions about the power of lust in his personal life. His narrative, which reads like a novel, echoes the stories that we have heard this morning from the Book of Daniel and the Gospel of John. Describing his own free choice to give in to his lustful urges he writes: “What was there to bring me delight except to love and be loved? But that due measure between soul and soul, wherein lie the bright boundaries of friendship, was not kept. Clouds arose from the slimy desires of the flesh and from youth’s seething spring. They clouded over and darkened my soul, so that I could not distinguish the calm light of chaste love from the fog of lust. Both kinds of affection burned confusedly within me and swept my feeble youth over the crags of desire and plunged me into a whirlpool of shameful deeds. Your wrath was raised above me, but I knew it not. I wandered farther away from you, and you let me go. I was tossed about and spilt out in my fornications. I flowed out and boiled over in them, but you kept silent. Ah, my late-found joy! You kept silent at that time, and farther and farther I went from you, into more and more fruitless seedings of sorrow, with a proud dejection and a weariness without rest.” (cf. The Confessions of St. Augustine, Image Books, John K. Ryan, Translator, pp. 65-66)
He continues by noting the way in which he sought in vain to escape from God. “I, poor wretch, foamed over: I followed after the sweeping tide of passions and I departed from you. I broke all your laws, but I did not escape your scourges. For what mortal man can do that? You were always present to aid me, merciful in your anger, and charging with the greatest bitterness and disgust all my unlawful pleasures, so that I might seek after pleasure that was free from disgust, when I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord. For you fashion sorrow into a lesson to us. You smite so that you may heal. You slay us, so that we may not die apart from you.” (cf. The Confessions, p. 66)
Augustine readily acknowledges that he has indulged his sexual appetites. However, he is not like the elders, in the story of Susanna, who wanted to conceal their sinfulness. He is more like the woman caught in adultery. He is remorseful of his freely chosen sinfulness and he seeks forgiveness. Augustine experiences genuine gratitude because even though he may have abandoned God, God has not abandoned him. God remains for him and for us the Hound of Heaven.
St. Augustine’s mediations on grace and freedom, sin and forgiveness, today’s scriptural are reflections on sin and forgiveness and Walker Percy’s concerns about the rejection of God and perdition have been dominant themes of the scriptures during these days of Lent. The Johanine stories of the Samaritan woman at the well, the story of the man who was blind from birth, and the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, that we heard earlier, are all from the St. John gospels, as is today’s account of the woman caught in adultery. As narrative theology, these dramas are unsurpassed in their powerful portrait of the titanic struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, life and death that are the central theme in John’s gospel, the book of signs.
The same struggle is waged in each of our own personal lives. In the Eucharist we are assured of the presence of Christ as our light, our good, our life, our grace and our forgiveness. Christ never wrote a book of any kind that is known to us. Today’s gospel contains the only scriptural mention of his writing anything. “He bent down and began to write, tracing his finger in the sand.” It is tantalizing to try to imagine what he might have written.
It is easy to suggest that he was writing down the grievous sins of the accusing elders. However, what he might have written about those who were seeking the death of the adulterer is not very important. We would do better to contemplate what Christ might write in the sand about each of us. What might he write that would cause each one of us to drift away from those at whom we are tempted to cast the first stone of accusation and moral judgment? Because he knows us better than we know ourselves, Christ could write the pages of our own most personal stories. These would be pages of a novel more profound and more important to us than anything anyone else could write. They would be so telling that, on the one hand, we would be most eager to read them and, on the other hand, we might wish never to read them.
While it is unquestionably true that Christ could reveal each one of us to ourselves by writing in the sand before our feet, it is we ourselves who are writing our own life stories. The choices we are making, no less than those of Susanna, the adulterer, the elders, Augustine or the characters in Percy’s novels, are defining us as the one and only editions of ourselves.
During these final days before Palm Sunday, before we go up with Jesus to Jerusalem, let us read carefully the pages of our own soul. Are we ready for Jerusalem? Are we ready to go with Christ and stay with him after the hosannas have died down? Are we ready to recline with him at table and receive bread and wine that are food and drink indeed? Are we ready to obey the new commandment and continue the ministry of the washing of the feet? Are we ready for the garden and the agony? For the scourging and the crowning? For the cross, the passion and the dying? Are we ready for the tomb, the silence and the vigil?
Are we ready to open up our hearts to everyone we meet and say Jesus Christ is the Way? If we are ready, then his story becomes our story. And it is the greatest story ever told!
24 November 2001
