Third Sunday of Lent

Sunday, March 24th

Scripture

Ex 17: 3 -7
Ps 95: 1-2. 6-7. 8-9
Rom 5: 1-2. 5-8
Jn 4: 5-42

Reflection

Today’s first and third readings tell us that God is a water-giver. God gives water to the grumbling Israelites through the staff of Moses and to the Samaritan woman through her interaction with Jesus. Not a sip, mind you, but a spring of water, leaping up for eternal life. If we drink deeply of the water of life so freely and abundantly given by God, life and growth happen in our lives beyond our most desirable imagining. Ex 17: 3-7 and Jn 4. 5-42. But it is not enough to drink what the water-giver offers. We must become the water- giver. We became the water-giver when we put on Christ at our baptisms. But life is long and in our own thirst, we easily forget our call to assuage the thirst of others. These readings are a precious reminder: there are many successors of the Samaritan woman in our day… people wandering in their own desert, unwanted and rejected . Jesus abides in all the thirsty. In them, he says to us “Give me a drink.”

Prayer

Water-giver God, from the beginning of creation to this day, you have given each person a thirst for ordinary water and a thirst for the water of life. With each sip of ordinary water we take, may our whole being be turned to those whose thirst is as true and real as ours. May we do what we can to help quench their thirsts. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Brother and Lord. Amen.

Personal Challenge

To let myself be thirsty once in a while so as
to deepen the way I value the thirsts of others.

Joan Sobala, SSJ
Rochester, NY

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