March 18th, 2024
What unites Susanna with the woman caught in adultery? They are in horrifying but quite different situations. One wants to tread tenderly here: haven’t these women suffered enough?
Maybe it is the men’s wicked oversight in applying the law of Moses: Daniel calls out the foolish children of Israel, who would condemn one of their own without examination or evidence. Similarly, the scribes and Pharisees have failed to haul in the adulterous man, though the law sentences him to death too.
The elders lay their hands on Susanna's head — the gesture over those accused of a capital crime, but also the one imposed on the Jewish ritual scapegoat. The woman caught in adultery appears to fill this classic scapegoat role, as described by René Girard: two conflicting parties can restore apparent peace by identifying and expelling a victim.
Just before the scene with the adulterous woman, an argument erupts among the chief priests, Pharisees and the temple police over Jesus’ identity. They throw a few insults but end at an impasse. Do they seek out the woman because they can’t abide the unresolved conflict? Are they drawing the woman into their conflict over Jesus — two birds with one unthrown stone?
Jesus will not abide it. Whatever he writes on the ground, he deflects the mob’s eyes from the woman. He then sends their attention to the stone. Who among them is sinless? By law, an eyewitness must cast the first stone: maybe they’re not eyewitnesses. The elders leave first: maybe the Word has awakened their awareness of their sins. Either way, Jesus lets the woman go. The stone remains, waiting for another day.
It awaits the day, the hour, when the stone the elders rejected becomes the cornerstone. Jesus, the one without sin, takes the place of the condemned woman in front of Calvary’s mob. The stone plunges himself into the valley of the shadow of death (today’s Psalm), that we might go and sin no more. The desert rock is pierced. From his side, along with blood, flow restful waters.
Trained classically as an opera singer, Fr. Samuel Bellafiore is a priest in the diocese of Albany, New York, where he serves in parish ministry and in forming seminarians. He is glad that you exist.