Year C / Lent / Week 3 / Sunday
Readings: Exodus 17.3-7 / Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 8) / Romans 5.1-2, 5-8 / John 4:5-42 (For the Scrutiny)
“. . . the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).
Here is St Paul declaring the power of the Holy Spirit. He declares it to the first Christians in Rome. Today he declares it to you and me. He can because the Holy Spirit empowers him to do this. The Holy Spirit he received, totally unexpectedly, totally gratuitously, when Jesus encountered him for the first time on the road to Damascus. For Paul, this experience transformed him; it was so dramatic, he refers to it as a “new creation.”
Today, and for the following two Saturdays, at this Mass, we’ll have the RICA Scrutinies after the homily. These are rites to prepare the 13 elect, 2 candidates and 1 confirmand in our parish to become God’s “new creation” at Easter. Then, they will be baptised, confirmed and welcomed into the Church To prepare them for this, the Scrutiny rites help purify them from sin and sinful desires.
“What moves our 16 friends here to do this?” you may ask. Nothing less than their thirst for God is my reply. Their example should remind us of our own thirst for God.
In everyday life, we thirst for water. This is an apt symbol for the thirst for God. The symbol of water then resonates with the love of God "poured out" into Paul’s heart, and their hearts, and our hearts too, through the Holy Spirit!
The symbol of water runs throughout today’s readings, especially as living water for our souls. Are you and I thirsting this Lent for God’s life-giving water?
In the first reading, the Israelites are wandering in the hot, harsh desert to the Promised Land. They have children and livestock in tow. They were dying of thirst. They needed water, lots of it. They complained to Moses that God didn't care for them, and Moses cried out to the Lord. The Lord responded, “Strike the rock, and water will flow from it for the people to drink.” Unexpected and unmerited the Israelites were saved from death by God by the gift of water.
Aren’t we like these Israelites? Their loss of faith is our loss of faith when things don’t go our way as we had asked God for or when we feel God is not with us. In these moments, our souls thirst but the hardness of our hearts blocks us from receiving the water of God’s love. Even worse, our hardheartedness numbs our sense of thirst; we feel self-satisfied and have no need for God. Sadly, we still thirst - for God. Maybe the thirst of our 16 friends for God will open us even more to this Lenten truth: God readily wants to give us his living water. Are we thirsting?
Unlike the Israelites, the Samaritan woman in the gospel reading shows us how to acknowledge our thirst for God. This is the kind of thirst God truly wants to quench. It begins when we recognise we are really thirsting for Jesus - He is God’s living water.
Jesus encounters this woman at a watering hole, at Jacob’s Well. Jesus asks her for a drink. She hesitates incredulous that a Jew and male would ask her a Samaritan and a female for a drink -- Jews typically despise and shun Samaritans. Jesus assures her that he will give her “living water.”
Touched deeply by Jesus, her life is turned around. She admits her sinfulness honestly. She leads her fellow Samaritans to him joyfully. They, in turn, come to believe in him wholeheartedly. Truly, no one remains the same after encountering Jesus; He changes everyone for better.
So it must also be for us. Jesus satisfies our thirst for God in every moment and through every person. With eyes of faith and by paying attention to each encounter, we will see God’s goodness present, even more, transforming us.
In Lent, Jesus especially wants to quench our thirst for conversion as he did for the Samaritan woman. He will meet us at all the different wells where we go to drink for life. There he will say, “Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again but anyone who drinks the water I shall give will never be thirsty again; the water I shall give will turn into a spring of water inside him, welling up to eternal life.”
Many want this; we believe it and so we hope for it. Hear again St Paul’s assurance that “This hope is not deceptive because the love of God has been poured into our hearts.” No longer parched, our thirsty souls come alive with God's love in us. But we must desire this and convert for it. Are we?
The Israelites thirst. The Samaritan woman thirsts. We thirst. Jesus also thirsts.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus says to the Samaritan woman. It seems odd that Jesus who is Living Water is asking this of a sinner. But it isn’t if we understand that Jesus thirsts for her conversion and salvation. He knows she is capable of this because he sees through her sins to the goodness in her heart to give him a drink. This goodness is her God-given potential to repent and convert.
We too want to repent and come home to God this Lent. Through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving we seek God’s help for conversion. This is how we will reconcile with God and one another. Let us not be afraid or ashamed to ask Jesus for forgiveness. He’ll give it because He sees the same goodness in us to repent and convert as he saw in the Samaritan woman.
Our 16 friends who are saying ‘yes’ to becoming God’s “new creation” in Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter know this. Their example must encourage us to also come to Jesus who thirsts for us and our salvation. Shall we?
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