First Reading - Exodus
17:3-7 ©
Responsorial
Psalm - Psalm 94(95):1-2, 6-9 ©
Second Reading – Romans 5:1-2,
5-8 ©
Gospel
Acclamation – John 4:42, 15
The Gospel According to John
– 4:5 - 42 ©
(NJB)
Third Sunday of Lent
(Year A)
Listen!
God
did not cause water to flow from the rock in Horeb. God did not lead the people
through the desert.
God
had nothing to do with any of the events described in the reading for today,
the faith of the Church cannot be built on lies, and the truth is this; none of
these things ever even happened.
We
may take the narrative metaphorically; if we do then the meaning is this: Trust
God.
Trust
in the divine, God may not free you from your immediate struggle, but God will
heal us all in the end.
Be
mindful!
God
will make us well, it is God who creates in us the possibility of wellbeing.
God
is our wellbeing, but know this: God is not a king.
The
whole of creation belongs to God, all that is good and all that we fear, everything
comes from God, and everything we experience will redound to the good.
Listen!
It
is good to show our respect for the creator and to sing songs in praise of God,
therefore remember, God, the creator of the universe, God is our loving parent
and has prepared each of us for God’s blessing.
Consider
the teaching of the apostle.
When we say that we are judged as righteous, and that
we are at peace with God by faith; we mean to say that our trust in God’s
promise of peace, and God’s promise regarding the restoration of the entire
world, it is our faith in these things that allows us to lead lives that are
righteous, just, merciful and humble.
If we boast that our faith, this trust in God’s plan
for the entire human race allows us to see the coming of God, it is only
because we know that God dwells within us already, and in the relationships we have with each other, when we
look into each other’s hearts, then we are able to see the beauty of the
divine. It is present in us, and fully manifest when we are loving and caring
toward each other.
Know this!
Contrary to what the apostle taught, Jesus was not a
sacrificial victim. His blood did not have magic powers. God, the creator of
the universe does not love holocausts and burnt offerings.
God loves mercy and God love justice.
Jesus acted mercifully and with full regard for his
followers when he allowed himself to be taken to the cross, many would have
died if he had not. He gave his life to save them, to save them in their own
time and place, he did not give his life as a cosmic sacrifice for the sins of
the world.
Consider
the gospel for today.
This
is not a story about who Jesus is. Though most readers and interpreters of the
sacred text treat it as such.
This
is not a story about the Messiah or the Christ or living water, and it is not a
story about baptism, or the mercy of Jesus.
In
sitting down with the woman by the well Jesus was not doing anything
extraordinary. He was simply following the way and teaching it through his
actions.
This
is a story about discipleship, and the first Apostle of the Christian Church;
she was a woman, a woman without a husband, she was an outsider and a
Samaritan.
It
is clear from the text that this Samaritan woman was a person of influence in
her community, we know this because after she met Jesus she went to speak with
the people of her town, and on the strength of her testimony we are told that
the entire community converted to the faith.
They
became the very first church, an entire community of believers, formed by the
witness of this woman, who shared with them the compassion of Jesus, and
brought them into the way.
Jesus
says to the disciples who came late in the day after this encounter, that the harvest
is already coming in, he was speaking of the work that began with this woman,
she began the harvest on her own.
This
is why Jesus told the disciples that they would take credit for the work that
others had done, because even though this story endured, the woman by the well
was never given the credit she deserved, one or another of the disciples took
credit for the founding of that community in the end.
Be
mindful of this, follow Jesus in the way, not the prideful nature of the
disciples.
The
Gospel of the day is a remarkable story of egalitarianism, and the way
of true Christians, a way that does not define the authority of its members by
gender or class, or station. It recognizes the authority of those who have it,
having been given it by their acknowledgment of the truth and the spirit that
is within them.
Strike
the Rock, and Water Will Flow from It
Tormented
by thirst, the people complained against Moses. ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt?’
they said. ‘Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children too, and my
cattle?’
Moses
appealed to the Lord. ‘How am I to deal with this people?” he said. ‘A little
more and they will stone me!’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take with you some of
the elders of Israel and move on to the forefront of the people; take in your
hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I shall be standing
before you there on the rock, at Horeb. You must strike the rock, and water
will flow from it for the people to drink.’ This is what Moses did, in the
sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah because
of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the
test by saying, ‘Is the Lord with us, or not?’
Responsorial
Psalm - Psalm 94(95):1-2, 6-9 ©
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come,
ring out our joy to the Lord;
hail the rock who saves us.
Let
us come before him, giving thanks,
with songs let us hail the Lord.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come
in; let us bow and bend low;
let us kneel before the God who made us:
for
he is our God and we
the people who belong to his pasture,
the flock that is led by his hand.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice!
‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the desert
when
your fathers put me to the test;
when they tried me, though they saw my work.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Second
Reading – Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 ©
The
Love of God Has Been Poured Into Our Hearts
Through
our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God,
since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace
in which we can boast about looking forward to God’s glory. And this hope is
not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit which has been given us. We were still helpless when at his
appointed moment Christ died for sinful men. It is not easy to die even for a
good man – though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared
to die – but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we
were still sinners.
Gospel
Acclamation – John 4:42, 15
Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
Lord,
you are really the saviour of the world:
give
me the living water, so that I may never get thirsty.
Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
The Gospel According to John
– 4:5 - 42 ©
A
Spring of Water Welling Up to Eternal Life
Jesus
came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his
son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight
down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to
draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’
His
disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The
Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan,
for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus
replied:
‘If
you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you:
Give
me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you
living water.’
‘You
have no bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep:
how
could you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob
who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’
Jesus
replied:
‘Whoever
drinks this water will get thirsty again; but anyone who drinks the water that
I shall give will never be thirsty again:
the
water that I shall give
will
turn into a spring inside him,
welling
up to eternal life.’
‘Sir,’
said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and
never have to come here again to draw water.’
‘Go
and call your husband’ said Jesus to her
‘and
come back here.’
The
woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’
He
said to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”; for although you have
had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’
‘I
see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this
mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to
worship.’ Jesus said:
‘Believe
me, woman,
the
hour is coming
when
you will worship the Father
neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You
worship what you do not know;
we
worship what we do know:
for
salvation comes from the Jews.
But
the hour will come
–
in fact it is here already –
when
true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:
that
is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.
God
is spirit, and those who worship
must
worship in spirit and truth.’
The
woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is
coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything.’
‘I
who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’
At
this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a
woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you
talking to her?’
The
woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people.
‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is
the Christ?’ This brought people out of the town and they started walking
towards him.
Meanwhile,
the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said,
‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples asked one
another, ‘Has someone been bringing him food?’
But
Jesus said:
‘My
food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.
Have
you not got a saying:
Four
months and then the harvest?
Well,
I tell you:
Look
around you, look at the fields;
already
they are white, ready for harvest!
Already
the reaper is being paid his wages,
already
he is bringing in the grain for eternal life, and thus sower and reaper rejoice
together.
For
here the proverb holds good:
one
sows, another reaps; I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for.
Others
worked for it; and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’
Many
Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s
testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’, so, when the
Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two
days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the
woman, ‘Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him
ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world.’
Third Sunday of Lent
(Year A)
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