Justice and mercy
The Pharisees said amongst themselves regarding Jesus : “He has a reputation for being true and has an air of gentleness; we’ll have to attack him on a matter of justice. Let us take a woman to him who has been caught openly in the crime of adultery and say to him what the Law demands on the subject”… What does the Lord Jesus reply? What does Truth answer? (Jn 14:6). What does Wisdom have to say?” (1Cor 1:24). How does Justice itself respond when thus put to the test? Jesus does not say: “Let her not be stoned”, since he does not wish to seem to speak against the Law. However, he takes good care not to say: “Let her be stoned”, since he has come not to lose what he has found but to “seek out what is lost” (Lk 19:10). So what does he reply? Note how justice, gentleness and truth are fulfilled at the same time: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” he says.
Wisdom’s answer! How he makes them return to themselves! Their manoeuvers were external but they did not look into the depths of their own hearts. They saw the adulteress but did not observe themselves… O Pharisees, doctors of the Law, you have heard the Law’s guardians but have not understood the One who gives the Law. Indeed, the Law has been written by the finger of God but, because of the hardness of people’s hearts, it has been written in stone (Ex 31:18; 34:1). Now the Lord writes in the dust because he is looking for the Law’s fruit… “Let each one examine himself, return to himself, place himself before the judgement seat of his soul… Anyone who looks at himself attentively inevitably finds himself a sinner. So let this woman go or submit yourself to the punishment of the Law along with her”…
This is the voice of justice: “Let the guilty be punished but not by the guilty. Let the Law be executed but not by those who break the Law”… Struck by the justice as by the point of a lance they return to themselves and find themselves to be sinners, “they went away, one by one.”