In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, “go and sin no more.” The connection between Jesus and the woman is not the consequence of condemnation but rather the fruit of forgiveness offered and accepted. Nothing is as important as forgiveness. It is the key to happiness and the most crucial spiritual imperative in our lives. The ability to forgive is more contingent upon grace than upon willpower. To err is human, but to forgive is divine. This little slogan contains a deeper truth than is immediately evident. What makes forgiveness so difficult, existentially impossible at times, is not primarily that our egos are bruised and wounded. Instead, the real difficulty is that a wound to the soul works the same as a wound to the body; it strips us of our strength.