The Sin We Never Confess
Gossip feels harmless. Jesus and Susanna say otherwise.
Dear friends,
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each day during Lent, I offer a short meditation on the day’s scripture readings — an honest encounter between the Gospel and our conscience. These reflections are my most personal writing.
They are rooted in the Catholic tradition of repentance, renewal, and resolve — and in the conviction that Lent is the season for confronting our idols, naming our failures, and turning back to God.
These reflections are my most personal writing. They are meant to be read when you can find a quiet moment. I hope they meet you where you are.
“Let the one among you who is without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.” — John 8:7
I said something about a friend last week that I did not need to say. It was true. That is the part that made it feel permissible. The information was accurate, the delivery casual, the audience small. Nobody was hurt, I told myself. It was just talk.
It was gossip. And I knew it the moment the words left my mouth.
Today’s readings are a confrontation with the weapons we carry in our mouths. In the first reading from Daniel, Susanna — a woman of faith and integrity — is nearly destroyed by the false testimony of two elders who wanted what they could not have.
When she refused them, they turned their tongues into instruments of execution.
They lied, publicly, under oath, and a community believed them because the accusers held power and the accused did not.
The story of Susanna is a story about what words can do when wielded by people who feel entitled to use them. The elders did not swing swords. They whispered. They testified. They narrated a version of events that served their own wounded pride, and an innocent woman almost died for it.
Then the Gospel places us at the feet of Jesus, where a woman caught in adultery is dragged before him by men who have already decided her sentence.
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”
Jesus bends down and writes something cryptic in the dirt.
