HOMILY PRONOUNCED  BY  MONS. DIEGO  MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
SUNDAY 5TH.  OF  LENT.

 Sunday, march 25th. of 2007

JESUS HAS COME TO SAVE, TO FORGIVE.

My dear brothers and sisters, in two more weeks, we will be in the big celebration of  the Easter. The next sunday will be the Palm Sunday which is the entrance of the Holy Week. In the proximity of the Easter, today we have listened sacred texts which invite us to the newness, to the transformation to walk forward as the Lord Jesus who passed through the death to a new life.

For three consecutive sundays, the God´s word  that we have proclaimed (particularly in the Gospel) invites to the conversion. It can seem like a reiterated situation throughout the Lent, but if we realize about our human weekness, (we began by remembering that we come from the dust and the mud and we return to them.) listening during three consecutive sundays a message which invites to the conversion, it is not excessive. The advertising campaign insists with more reiteration to convince us of  things that are (without doubt) much more banal.

Fifteen days ago (the third sunday of Lent), the Lord Jesus invited us to the conversion through examples of the history which impell him to repeat: “If you don´t repent ... if you don´t repent...” the last sunday (fourth of  Lent) the call of  conversion arrived at us through a parable  and this fifth sunday, the same call comes to us by the contemplation of a real case of somebody that although fell in sin, he had an encounter with the Lord Jesús.

We have to pay attention in one element wich is repeated in the three sundays: in all of them it warns that we can´t take refuge in the sin of the others to excuse the ours. In the three, it leads us to be conscious of  our personal situation of sin. In the Gospel from today, this is very clear: Nobody of the people that are in front of Jesus recognizes that they are “without sin”.

Mi dear brothers, we have to let that the word of the Lord (that He gives us today) illuminates us. The prophet Isaiah already announced the rescuing  intentions of God. We walk opened through the sea and the desert, rivers of water in sterile and dry places, water that satisfy the thirst, joy and freedom.

And one attitude of newnees and bravery of the town of Israel: “ don´t remember  the things from the past, don´t think about the old things; look that I am doing something new, it is starting to be seen, ¿do you realize it?, these readings seem very optimistic for the Lent, because we are in the doors of  the Easter. That´s why in the psalm we have proclaimed a chant wich was also fulled of optimism: “The Lord has been big with us and we are happy”.

Saint Paulo also invites us to have an attitude of transformation and dynamic creativity. According to the second reading, Sain Paul said to us that the unique thing that is important to him is Christ and he considers the rest of  the things much less important. “garbage”, he said. His spiritual attitude is the next one: “forgetting me which it is left back, and sending to me towards  which it is ahead, I run to the goal, to gain the prize to which God calls me in Christ Jesus”.

This is the consequence that we would have to get from the celebration of the Lent and of the Easter. If we remember the death and resurrection of Christ, it is not to celebrate an aniversary, It is to enter in the same experience of Christ. Paulo said it in a very good way: “ It is dying his own death to arrive one day at the resurrection”. This is the meaning of the Lent that we will celebrate very soon: it is incorporating ourselves in the death of Christ and passing with him to the new life that He wants to communicate to us. That is the goal. We run towards that.

But the scene of the Gospel is the one that better prepares us to the celebration of the Easter of 2007. The chapter is very stirring. One sinner woman was brought Jesus, woman to who the law said to be stoned. All the eyes of the present people are fixed on Jesus. The woman was very ashamed and she also was waiting for the answer that Jesus was going to say.

But Jesus has come to save, to forgive. The doctor is for sick people and not for healthy people. That´s why Jesus solves the situation in an elegant and delicate way. We don´t know What Jesus wrote on the floor, but we do know what He said to the people who accused the woman: “The person that is without sin is allowed to throw the first stone”. And also the dialogue (filled with respect) with the woman: “I do not condemn to you either. Go and in ahead don´t sin more”.

Dear brothers: how many times (as the scribes and pharisees) do we fill ourselves of arrogance and we think that we have the right to judge others?, how many times do we arm ourselves with stones to hurt and destroy somebody who does not act like us?, how many times do we use the law to kill intead of giving life?, how many times do we behave indifferent in front of who without scruples approve laws against the life?

We can not, we must not change our values in favor of  human life, for the recent pseudo-values of the modern thing, of the transitory thing, or of a fleeting  fashion of partisan thought or political ideology. Today more than ever, must shine a new sense of responsability to the sacred of the human life in the history of everyone and in every family.

Today more than ever it is neccesary a movement of social sensitization in favor of the sacred of the human life, in our city, in our México, movement which moves to the legislators and governors to create public policies and laws that help to respect the “status” of the human embryo as a person; to the parents to procreate their children with responsability; to the yong people to love and to defend the human life; to the doctors and nurses to safeguard the most sacred  value of each Mexican, that is the innocent human life, the life of the unborn baby who lives defenseless and fragile in the womb of his mother.

Jesus invites the accusers of the woman and us to see our own life, to bend with him to touch the earth and to recognize the clay from which we are made, to release the stones and open ourselves to the forgiveness and to the mercy. The accusers went away one by one and just Jesus and the woman stayed there. “ Woman, where are the people who accused you?, has anybody accused you? (Jesus asked her), “nobody, Lord”. And Jesus said to her: “I do not condemn to you either. Go and do not sin anymore”. Jesus has overcome in a good way this test, the woman has been  pardoned and also she has been rid of dying stoned; the scribes and pharisees have been unmasked in their hypocrisy and they were forced to look at themselves. And what about us?.

Today in this celebration of the day of the sacred of the human life, in front of the Holy Mary of Guadalupe, our little girl and Lady, I invite everybody to work: everyone from his (her) own responsability to buil a new culture of the love and of  the human life, with the conviction that all the human life is sacred  because we received it from God as a gift of his love filled of mercy. I invite you to raise our voices in favor of the thousands of children who from the maternal womb they implore their mothers: MOM, DO NOT KILL ME. Mary mother of everybody, help us to defend the life.

AMEN.