In today's Gospel, we read the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11).For many reasons, this is one of my favorite Gospel stories. One thing I find amazing about it is that it almost didn't make it into the Bible. In fact, before the Bible was assembled the way it is today, some versions of John's Gospel didn't include this story.
St. Augustine says (cf. De coniugiis adulterinis, 2, 6) that many early Christians were afraid of keeping this story in John's Gospel since it showed Jesus as being so merciful that they thought it might lead people to think that the reality of sin wasn't as big of a deal as the Church made it out to be.
Apparently, the Holy Spirit wasn't concerned about this, since He made sure the story was kept in there.
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Naturally, my favorite Bible verse is John 2:14-16 —
"And in the temple there he found the merchants selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the moneychangers sitting at their trade. So he made a kind of whip out of cords, and drove them all, with their sheep and oxen, out of the temple, spilling the bankers' coins and overthrowing their tables."
Almost exactly the opposite, isn't it? Yet another reminder of how we need both the cross (punishment) and Jesus (forgiveness).
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