THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
15 MARCH 2020
With the relentless heat of the sun beating down,
the climate in the Holy Land is very hot.
After my Sabbatical in the Holy Land twenty years ago, I can empathize
with Jesus at Jacob’s well. Not only is
he tired from his journey, but he is very thirsty. In the ancient world, wells provided welcome
relief from thirst. They were also
places where people attended to other issues.
After he escaped Pharaoh, Moses mediated a dispute at a well in
Midian. For his efforts, the priest of
Midian offered his daughter, Zipporah, to Moses in marriage. Isaac met his bride Rebecca at a well, and
Jacob met his bride Rachel at this same well.
Today, the
one who changed water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana is looking for
more than a drink of water at this well.
In asking a Samaritan woman for a drink, he crosses many boundaries of
religious convention. Jews and Samaritans
were avowed enemies. Neither Jewish nor
Samaritan men would ever address a woman in public, especially a woman who had
to come in the heat of the noonday sun to avoid the scorn of her neighbors who
would gather to draw water in the cooler morning or evening. In his conversation with this woman, he
reveals his thirst for her salvation and his desire to give her the living
waters of eternal life.
She is
stunned that he shows kindness to someone who is at the bottom of society. She responds to his kindness with openness to
what he has to say. She is moved by his
gentle mention of her marital status.
After they had been conquered by the Assyrians, the Samaritans had
allowed five different groups of people to bring in their own gods. Jesus gently rebukes their idolatry,
expressed in prophetic language as adultery.
He moves her challenge about which mountain is better for worship to a
promise that all who believe in him will worship in spirit and in truth. She accepts him as the promised Messiah,
leaves her most valuable possession (her water jar) at the well, and becomes
the first evangelist.
Jesus
addresses these words to those preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil. Like the woman at the well, these good people
(the Elect) have grown steadily in faith.
They have reached the point in their conversion that they are thirsting
for the living water which will bring them new life with the only one who can
satisfy our ultimate thirsts for meaning.
Today, at the 10:00 Mass, we will pray the first Scrutiny over them. In that Scrutiny, they will allow God to name
their sins. They will trust that God
scrutinizes whatever is evil in their lives.
They will be invited to turn away from anything that keeps them from a
full liberated life with Christ.
Jesus
addresses these words to all of us who have already received the life giving
waters of Baptism. We are like the
disciples who return with physical food and are shocked that he is talking with
a woman who is a Samaritan. We are
called to admit that we have not always lived faithfully the promises made at
our Baptisms. Through our Lenten
disciplines, we open our hearts to allow God to name our sin and scrutinize the
evil in our lives. He invites us to turn
away from anything that keeps us from living a full liberated life with Christ. The call to conversion involves turning away
from those things that seem to satisfy our thirsts, but cannot.
In turning
more completely toward Jesus Christ and away from those thirsts that can never
satisfy, we can learn from the journey of the Israelite from slavery in Egypt
to freedom in the Promised Land. Like
them, we will encounter roadblocks on the way to conversion. I think that the Coronavirus is one of
them! It took them forty years to become
fully free. It takes time for us to turn
away from sin, which always involves some form of slavery. Like them, we are always tempted to look
back. Is the Lord in our midst or
not? The Samaritan woman at the well
responded with a resounding yes. She
invites us to do the same.
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