Quick Links: Letter, Hungry for More, Moral Authority, Making the Connection, Further Reading, Next Steps
Hungry for More: Letter Three
This story of the Woman Caught in Adultery is instructive for us when approaching our topic of sexual morality as it relates to Old Testament Law. The Scribes and the Pharisees were sincere in their love and devotion to the law, but it was, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 7, something that they could not practice themselves. Speaking from his past experience under the law, St. Paul remembers what it was like: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” In our story here, Jesus calls them on their hypocrisy.
The problem is not with the law, but with our fallen natures that are resistant to the law. Therefore, the law, in and of itself, can only condemn us. However, Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law in His flesh, shifting our focus from the “letter of the law,” which is external to us, to a Person, who dwells within us through faith and sacrament. We find ourselves empowered by the indwelling Christ and the Holy Spirit to live obedient lives in the spirit of the law. This is why Jesus could tell the woman “Go and sin no more.”
It is essential to see that the Old Testament Law is not nullified by Christ but amplified and expanded in Christ. When Jesus bent over and drew in the sand with His finger, this action identifies Him as the same God on Mount Sinai who drew in stone the Ten Commandments with His finger. We see Jesus seated on the Mount expounding His expectations to His disciples, how their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the religious elite. Consider this from our Catechism:
1965 The New Law or the Law of the Gospel is the perfection here on earth of the divine law, natural and revealed. It is the work of Christ and is expressed particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. It is also the work of the Holy Spirit and through him it becomes the interior law of charity: “I will establish a New Covenant with the house of Israel…. I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
1967 The Law of the Gospel “fulfills,” refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection.
Why is this so important in our discussion on sexual morality? There has been, since the very beginning of the Church, a heresy, first promulgated by Marcion in the second Century, that divides and contrasts the Old Testament from the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament was vindictive, vengeful, and violent, whereas the God of the New Testament was a god of love as revealed in Jesus. This was picked up, in part, in the Reformation where it interpreted the Old Testament as essentially about law, and the New Testament as essentially about grace.
Subscribing to this heresy leads many in our culture to reduce God to a benign old sleepy deity that pats us all on our heads, no matter how we live morally, and sings, along with the Beatles, “All we need is Love.” This worldly conception of “love” has absolutely no connection to the mind of Christ or the obedience of Christ. Jesus and Gospel love is reduced to “tolerance” in contrast to a perceived intolerance and judgmentalism of the Old Testament. In contrast to this, the Gospels plainly portray Jesus with maximum tolerance for sinners, but zero tolerance for sin.
This reductionist conception of love has no connection to the compassion of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels either. The compassion of Christ is costly, self-sacrificing. When Jesus saw the crowds, He was deeply moved viscerally, as the Greek word is best translated. It drew out of Him self-sacrificing action. In contrast, love is practically acted out in our culture something like this: “I love you because you are convenient and you make me happy. When you are no longer convenient, I am no longer happy, and I am out of here.” This cheap love is swallowed up in self, and true compassion ceases to exist.
When we call Jesus “Lord,” which we can only do if we have the Spirit of God (I Cor. 12:3), we are identifying Him as YHWH of the Old Testament. He is the Old Testament Law Giver incarnate in the New Testament. Therefore, He is far more demanding with us than Old Testament believers because we possess the same Holy Spirit as He possessed, and He models for us how to live and act. In Christ, we can know God: His thoughts, love, compassion, and will for our moral lives. He invites us to imitate Him in every way as the Catechism says,
520 In all of his life Jesus presents himself as our model. He is “the perfect man”, who invites us to become his disciples and follow him. In humbling himself, he has given us an example to imitate, through his prayer he draws us to pray, and by his poverty he calls us to accept freely the privation and persecutions that may come our way
521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. “By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man.” We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model:
We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church. . . For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us (St. John Eudes)
Moral Authority
Sources for Catholic Teaching
Scripture References
Phillipians 2: 4-11 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Catechism References
1616 This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her”, adding at once: “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.”
1825 Christ died out of love for us, while we were still ‘enemies’. The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those furthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.
564 By his obedience to Mary and Joseph, as well as by his humble work during the long years in Nazareth, Jesus gives us the example of holiness in the daily life of family and work
2740 The prayer of Jesus makes Christian prayer an efficacious petition. He is its model, he prays in us and with us. Since the heart of the Son seeks only what pleases the Father, how could the prayer of his children of adoption be centered on the gifts rather than the Giver?
2862 The fifth petition [of the Our Father] begs God’s mercy for our offenses, mercy which can penetrate our hearts only if we have learned to forgive our enemies, with the example and help of Christ.
Vatican documents referring to the heart, mind, and obedience of Jesus include
Pope Francis’s 2024 encyclical Dilexit Nos, which focuses on Jesus’s heart, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2008 instruction The Service of Authority and Obedience, which discusses Jesus’s childlike obedience to the Father. The Dilexit Nos encyclical emphasizes the heart as the seat of intimacy, understanding, and loving obedience, while The Service of Authority and Obedience explores how Jesus’s own obedience to the Father’s will is the basis of his freedom and the model for human obedience.
Key Documents
- (2024): This encyclical by Pope Francis is specifically about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, focusing on the heart as the source of true closeness, understanding, and love. It highlights that it is through the heart that the mind and will are moved to understand and practice Jesus’s words, leading to reverence and loving obedience.
The Service of Authority and Obedience
- (2008): This document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith discusses Jesus’s perfect obedience to the Father’s plan, even in the face of suffering. It presents this obedience as the foundation of human dignity and freedom, a path to growth for the individual.
Themes
The Heart of Jesus
- In Dilexit Nos, the heart is not just a symbol but the source of God’s love and grace, enabling true encounter and reconciliation.
The Mind of Jesus
- The mind, enlightened by the Spirit, grows in its understanding of Jesus’s words through the encounter with his heart.
Obedience of Jesus
- Jesus’s absolute certainty in his Father’s plan allowed him to give himself up in total fidelity, a model of a childlike, free obedience that is foundational for believers.
Francis, Pope. The Face of Mercy: Misericordiae Vultus. Boston, Massachusetts: Pauline Books & Media, 2015. Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.
Pope Francis tells us of the constant need “to contemplate the mystery of mercy…in order that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives” For this reason, he proclaimed an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. This Bull of Indiction was given by Pope Francis in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on April 11, the Vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter, or Sunday of Divine Mercy, in the year of our Lord 2015, the third of his pontificate.
Making the Connection
A Real-Life Example
On April 1, 1942, Desmond Doss joined the United States Army. Little did he realize that three and a half years later, he would be standing on the White House lawn, receiving the nation’s highest award for his bravery and courage under fire.
Of the 16 million men in uniform during World War II, only 431 received the Congressional Medal of Honor. One of these was placed around the neck of a young Seventh-day Adventist, who during combat had not killed a single enemy soldier. In fact, he refused to carry a gun. His only weapons were his Bible and his faith in God.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Desmond was working at the Newport News Naval shipyard and could have requested a deferment—but he wanted to do more for his country. He was willing to risk his life on the front lines in order to preserve freedom.
When he joined the Army, Desmond assumed that his classification as a conscientious objector would not require him to carry a weapon. He wanted to be an Army combat medic. He was assigned to an infantry rifle company. His refusal to carry a gun caused a lot of trouble among his fellow soldiers. They viewed him with disdain and called him a misfit. One man in the barracks warned him, “Doss, as soon as we get into combat, I’ll make sure you won’t come back alive.”
His commanding officers also wanted to get rid of the skinny Virginian who spoke with a gentle southern drawl. They saw him as a liability. Nobody believed a soldier without a weapon was worthwhile. They tried to intimidate him, scold him, assign him extra tough duties, and declared him mentally unfit for the Army. Then they attempted to court martial him for refusing a direct order—to carry a gun. But they failed to find a way to toss him out, and he refused to leave. He believed his duty was to obey God and serve his country. But it had to be in that order. His unwavering convictions were most important.
Desmond had been raised with a fervent belief in the Bible. When it came to the Ten Commandments, he applied them personally. In Desmond’s mind, God said, “If you love me, you won’t kill.” With that picture firmly embedded in his mind, he determined that he would never take life. His religious upbringing included weekly church attendance, on the seventh day. The Army was exasperated to discover that he had yet another personal requirement. He asked for a weekly pass so he could attend church every Saturday. This meant two strikes against him. His fellow soldiers saw this Bible reading puritan, as being totally out of sync with the rest of the Army. So they ostracized him, bullied him, called him awful names, and cursed at him. His commanding officers also made his life difficult.
Things began turning around when the men discovered that this quiet unassuming medic had a way to heal the blisters on their march-weary feet. And if someone fainted from heat stroke, this medic was at his side, offering his own canteen. Desmond never held a grudge. With kindness and gentle courtesy, he treated those who had mistreated him. He lived the golden rule, “…do to others what you would have them do to you…” (Matthew 7:12 NIV).
Desmond served in combat on the islands of Guam, Leyte, and Okinawa. In each military operation he exhibited extraordinary dedication to his fellow men. While others were taking life, he was busy saving life. When the cry, “medic” rang out on the battlefield, he never considered his own safety. He repeatedly ran into the heat of battle to treat a fallen comrade and carry him back to safety. All this, while enemy bullets whizzed past and mortar shells exploded around him. Several times, while treating a wounded soldier, Desmond was so close to enemy lines, he could hear the whispering of Japanese voices.
In May, 1945, as German troops were surrendering on the other side of the world, Japanese troops were fiercely defending, to their last man, the only remaining barrier, Okinawa and the Maeda Escarpment. The men in Desmond’s division were repeatedly trying to capture the Maeda Escarpment, an imposing rock face the soldiers called Hacksaw Ridge. After the company had secured the top of the cliff, the Americans were stunned when suddenly enemy forces rushed them in a vicious counterattack. Officers ordered an immediate retreat. Soldiers rushed to climb back down the steep cliff. All the soldiers except one. Less than one third of the men made it back down. The rest lay wounded, scattered across enemy soil—abandoned and left for dead, if they weren’t already. One lone soldier disobeyed orders and charged back into the fire fight to rescue as many of his men as he could, before he either collapsed or died trying. His iron determination and unflagging courage resulted in at least 75 lives saved that day, May 5, 1945, his Sabbath.
Eventually, the Americans took Hacksaw Ridge. Okinawa was captured inch by bloody inch. Several days later, during an unsuccessful night raid, Desmond was severely wounded. Hiding in a shell hole with two riflemen, a Japanese grenade landed at his feet. The explosion sent him flying. The shrapnel tore into his leg and up to his hip. He treated his own wounds as best he could. While attempting to reach safety, he was hit by a sniper’s bullet that shattered his arm. His brave actions as a combat medic were done. But not before insisting that his litter-bearers take another man first before rescuing him. Wounded, in pain, and losing blood, he still put others ahead of his own safety. He would choose to die so another could live. After all, that’s what he read in his Bible. Such was the character demonstrated by Jesus Christ.
Adapted from:
Desmond Doss: The Real Story https://desmonddoss.com/bio/bio-real.phpStory
Further Reading
Additional Reading Materials
Hahn, Scott. Lord Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
An illuminating and reassuring explanation of the Catholic Church’s teachings on confession and forgiveness. A testament to the mercy of God and his love for each of us.
Phillipe, Jacques. Real Mercy: Mary, Forgiveness, and Trust. New York: Sceptor Publishers, 2016.
A collection of homilies compiled by Fr. Jacques Phillipe. Topics explored include: Our Blessed Mother, familial forgiveness, and essential trust in God. This book looks at the depth and breadth of God’s transcendent mercy for us, giving the reader a comprehensive understanding of our need to accept mercy for ourselves and to extend mercy to others.
Calloway, Donald H., MIC. No Turning Back: A Witness to Mercy. Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Marian Press, 2010.
This is an incredible story of a dramatic conversion from a life of crime to a love of Jesus and Mary and for surfing! The author is known as an ex-druggie, ex-criminal, surfer Catholic priest.
Next Steps
Ready to Take the Next Step?
How can we help our families become more comfortable talking about difficult issues? Study, Prayer and Practice!
How can we distinguish between an opinion and Revelation? Study, Prayer and Practice!
📖 Study
-
To act like Jesus you need to know Jesus. Get to know Him by reading from one of the gospels every day reflecting on Jesus’s words and actions. Jesus prayed, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17)
-
One way to do this is through the daily readings provided by the Catholic Church. There are many sources to find the daily readings including:
-
The United Conference of Catholic Bishops
-
Find the daily readings on their website www.uscbb.org OR, upon request, they will email them to you every day.
-
-
My Catholic Life app
-
A free app where you can find the daily readings, reflections, prayers, and more!
-
💖 Prayer from St. Faustina
O Lord. I want to be completely transformed into Your mercy. And to be Your living reflection. May the greatest of all divine attributes, that of Your unfathomable mercy, pass through My heart and soul to my neighbor. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me. Amen.
✝️ Practice
There was a commercial on television once that visibly showed the pain and troubles that people carry with them. People in the commercial had signs over their heads that said things like, “I am fighting colon cancer” and “I just lost my wife of 55 years.” The truth is – we are all struggling with something. Jesus knows that. When we know it, it makes it easier for us to focus on the person and not their behavior. The next time someone annoys or irritates you, practice giving them a benevolent interpretation of their actions before rushing to judgement.