Today, we contemplate in the Gospel the merciful face of Jesus. God is Love, Love that forgives, Love that has compassion on our failings, Love that saves. The teachers of the Law of Moses and the Pharisees said: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.” (Jn 8:4) and they asked the Lord: “So what do you say?” (Jn 8:5). They were not as much interested in following Jesus' teachings as they were in accusing Him of going against the Mosaic Law. But the Master takes advantage of this occasion to manifest that He has come to seek the sinners, to straighten out the fallen, to call them to conversion and to penance. And this is for us the message for Lent, since we are all sinners and we all need God's saving grace.
Today, it is said that the sense of sin is lost. There are many who do not know what is good or bad, nor why. It is like saying —in a positive way— that the sense of Love for God is lost: the sense of God's Love for us and the reciprocity this Love demands from us. He who loves does not offend. He who recognizes being loved and forgiven renders love for Love: “They asked the Friend which was the spring of love. He answered, the one where the Beloved has cleansed our faults” (Ramon Llull).
This is why the sense of conversion and penance during Lent is to confront us face-to-face with God, looking to the eyes of the Lord in the Cross, to personally go and confess our sins to Him through the sacrament of Penance. And Jesus will tell us as He did with the woman in the Gospel: “Neither do I condemn you. “Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.” (Jn 8:11). God forgives, and this entails a demand on our side, a commitment: Do not sin again!