Dear friends, Here is my homily for the Third Sunday of Lent. Over the last few years there has been an astronomical rise in the use of water bottles. It seems everywhere you turn there are people with a water bottle, not only at sporting events (as you would expect), but on the street, in the classroom, on public transit and in the airplane, at office desks, and even at Mass. I don’t know if it is that we are more thirsty, if public fountains are that more infrequent, or whether we have just fallen prey to advertising. I thought of that modern phenomenon when I first read the gospel of this weekend (John 4:5-42). There are a multitude of themes in the gospel that one could preach on, but what most caught my attention was the idea of ‘thirst’. We find Jesus and the Samaritan woman together at the well of Jacob, a historically significant site in Samaria. The fact that Jesus spoke with the woman was breaking with accepted practice. First of all, because she was a woman, unaccompanied by her husband, and secondly because she was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were Jews, but in their territory they did not recognize Jerusalem as the holy city, but rather their own mountain, Mount Gerizim. This set up a barrier between the Jews from the north and the south and the Samaritans, who occupied the territory between them. It led to suspicion and mistrust , reflected in the parable of the Good Samaritan where it was a Samaritan who helped the Jew who had been beaten and robbed and left for dead at the side of the road. He was the last and the least that one would have expected to come to his aid. The conversation between the Samaritan woman and Jesus presents us with a reflection on thirst and living water. His request for water puzzles her, because she is an unaccompanied woman and a Samaritan, but also because he has not brought a bucket to draw water from the well. Jesus, as God-made-man, experienced thirst, and having walked with his disciples to this place he was thirsty. However, it is more than water from Jacob’s well that Jesus speaks of to the Samaritan woman. He talks about “living water” that he will give. With this water anyone who drinks of this water “will never thirst” again. In fact he even says that “the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. This further confused the woman, as these terms baffled her imagination. How could he give such water? And what could he possibly mean about “a spring of water welling up to eternal life”? Then Jesus reveals to her his divinity by further confounding her by telling her that he knows she has had five husbands, and that the man she is living with now is not her husband. This completely astonishes her, as she had never seen him before, and there was no way that he could have known her situation. She recognizes him as a “prophet”. Jesus goes on to say that he is the Messiah of whom she speaks. After all of this I can imagine her running off to the town to tell the people about Jesus, and indeed the villagers did come and he spent two days with them, and many came to believe in him because of the profound teachings that he shared. Our First Reading, from the Book of Exodus (17:3-7) also speaks of thirst. The Israelites are grumbling to Moses that he has brought them out into the desert, and they are without water there. God reveals his love for them by instructing Moses to strike the rock in Horeb with his staff and water would flow “for the people to drink”. God fulfilled their need for water, and quenched their physical thirst. We all experience thirst. Just me talking about thirst may cause some of us to feel more thirsty. For what do we thirst? Some people may say love, happiness, peace, truth, success, security, forgiveness, wealth, fine things, or honours. Each one of us, in our own hearts, have to answer that question, “For what do I ‘thirst’?” Another way of asking it may be “When I look at my life and how I use my time and my resources, what is most important to me?”, “For what do I have passion?” Jesus presents himself to us in this gospel as that which we should thirst for. He is the one who can fulfill our deepest desires. Just as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well he tells us today that coming to him we will not thirst again. We will no longer need to search and inquire, we will find what we most need and desire in him alone. This will not only satisfy us here and now, but Jesus tells us that it will “become in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. He will give us life here and now that will lead to eternal life. There is an old Italian proverb that “Thirst comes from drinking”. With that logic, the more we drink the thirstier we become. In terms of our spiritual life, this would mean that the more we turn to Jesus and know, love and serve him, the more we will want to know and experience Jesus. Once we acquire a ‘taste’ for him, we will want more! At the end of the ‘Year of Faith’ we distributed in all the Parishes Matthew Kelly’s book The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic In reference to this theme of ‘thirst’ I would like to talk about the first two of the four signs that he identifies – prayer and study (the other two are generosity and evangelization). In regards to each of these that Italian proverb rings true – the more we pray the more we will want to pray, the more we study about our faith the more we will want to discover about our faith. He talks about taking ‘baby steps’ in regards to both. He suggests – start praying ten minutes a day, and work yourself up to more time over time. He also suggests reading two or three pages of a spiritual book, like The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic, that many of you have at home. Before you know it you will be finished the two hundred and seventeen pages. Hopefully it may send you out to look for another book to read about our Catholic faith. The more we ‘drink’ of prayer and study, the more thirst we will have. Perhaps we do not have many spiritual books in our home, but on line there is very reputable articles on a multitude of spiritual topics. There is also a lot of garbage on the internet, masquerading as Catholic literature, that is to be avoided. On this Third Sunday of our Lenten journey, still early on in it, I invite you to pick up Matthew Kelly’s book and start reading. Then take ten minutes yet today and re-read one of today’s readings (that are on the front of our Parish Bulletin), and each day this week (go to the back of the Bulletin and) read one of the readings of the day. You may be surprised how easy it is, how the Word may speak to you, how it gives you a focus in your prayer, and what ‘thirst’ it may quench for you that day. God is at work, and if we open ourselves to him in prayer and study we are sure to not be disappointed, and to find our deepest thirst, even that which we cannot articulate, being quenched through our encounter with Jesus. Indeed, he will give us “living water”.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 23:19:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015