Third Sunday of Lent

First Reading

Exodus 17,3-7

But tormented by thirst, the people complained to Moses. 'Why did you bring us out of Egypt,' they said, 'only to make us, our children and our livestock, die of thirst?' Moses appealed to Yahweh for help. 'How am I to deal with this people?' he said. 'Any moment now they will stone me!' Yahweh then said to Moses, 'Go on ahead of the people, taking some of the elders of Israel with you; in your hand take the staff with which you struck the River, and go. I shall be waiting for you there on the rock (at Horeb). Strike the rock, and water will come out for the people to drink.' This was what Moses did, with the elders of Israel looking on. He gave the place the names Massah and Meribah because of the Israelites' contentiousness and because they put Yahweh to the test by saying, 'Is Yahweh with us, or not?'

Psalmody

Psalm 94

Antiphon

Come, let us sing with joy to the Lord.

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.

A mighty God is the Lord,
a great king above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his.

To him belongs the sea, for he made it
and the dry land shaped by his hands.

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 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.

For forty years I was wearied of these people
and I said : "Their hearts are astray,
these people do not know my ways."

Then I took an oath in my anger:
'Never shall they enter my rest.'"

Second Reading

Romans 5,1-2.5-8

So then, now that we have been justified by faith, we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; it is through him, by faith, that we have been admitted into God's favour in which we are living, and look forward exultantly to God's glory. and a hope which will not let us down, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. When we were still helpless, at the appointed time, Christ died for the godless. You could hardly find anyone ready to die even for someone upright; though it is just possible that, for a really good person, someone might undertake to die. So it is proof of God's own love for us, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

Reading of the Gospel

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

John 4,5-42

On the way he came to the Samaritan town called Sychar near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, 'Give me something to drink.' His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, 'You are a Jew. How is it that you ask me, a Samaritan, for something to drink?' -- Jews, of course, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied to her: If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me something to 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 do 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 be thirsty again; but no one who drinks the water that I shall give will ever be thirsty again: the water that I shall give will become a spring of water within, welling up for eternal life. 'Sir,' said the woman, 'give me some of that water, so that I may never be thirsty or 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.' Jesus said to her, 'You are right to say, "I have no husband"; for although you have had five, the one you now have 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, though 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 is coming -- indeed is already here -- when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshipper the Father seeks. 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 explain everything.' Jesus said, 'That is who I am, I who speak to you.' 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, 'What are you talking to her about?' 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 have done; could this be the Christ?' This brought people out of the town and they made their way 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 said to one another, 'Has someone brought him food?' But Jesus said: My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work. Do you not have 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, so that sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the proverb holds true: one sows, another reaps; I sent you to reap a harvest you have not laboured for. Others have laboured for it; and you have come into the rewards of their labour. Many Samaritans of that town believed in him on the strength of the woman's words of testimony, 'He told me everything I have done.' So, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and many more came to believe on the strength of the words he spoke to them; and they said to the woman, 'Now we believe no longer because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he is indeed the Saviour of the world.'

 

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

Homily

The Gospel on the third Sunday of Lent brings us to Sychar, the ancient Shechem where Abraham had also spent time and which Jacob acquired to give to his son Joseph. During Jesus' time it was part of Samaria, a territory which had become hostile to Israel. Due to the water the well became a very precious place. And just as it was in public fountains of the past, the well was also a place of encounter. This is what happened that day, around noon. Jesus was thirsty and sitting by the well. Seeing a woman come close, Jesus asks her, "Give me a drink." Jesus, just as any poor man, speaks first and asks to drink. He had not yet given his speech on the final judgment but that reality was already present in this scene: "I was thirsty and you gave me to drink."
When we get close to the well of God's word we too find Jesus waiting there for us. He asks us, "Give ne to drink." What he really wants is our heart, our love, our affection. It is a request for friendship and for a stronger bond with him. And we too, like her, may have the tendency to reject that strong request for love and company. It can make us scared to be involved in such a strong and demanding way. It is easier to follow our laziness, our small passions, our small ideas. Jesus though, wants to involve us in his great plan of love and to free us from these small bonds which keep us so restricted in our narrow horizons. Jesus loves that woman when she was still far from him; but she does not realize it. She had become a hard woman, forced to defend herself and respond aggressively in order not to admit her failure and disappointments.
Her creed was closed up in that bucket and in her daily struggles. Words did not count for her anymore; she had become so hardened to life and so sceptical. But she had not stopped being clever. When Jesus spoke to her about a different water-the kind that takes away all thirst and does not require going to a well-she immediately seeks something out of it that is convenient for her. We could say that she wanted to take what could be good for her, take something from the Gospel, but then remain the same as always. But an encounter with Jesus is personal. Jesus helps her to come to her senses: he does not attack or humiliate her with an embarrassing description of her sin, or her history with so many sought and betrayed loves. He understands her. This really strikes the woman: being understood, known for what she was, and being loved still! And she who had come to draw water becomes a source of life. That story is also our story if we let ourselves be helped by the Lord. She leaves the bucket-some translate it as "let it fall," as if to indicate a break with her past-and she goes in haste not to her home or neighbourhood, but to the entire village. And she announces to all-no one excluded, even those who had judged her severely-she announces the extraordinary encounter which she had at the well of Jacob. Everyone then goes to the well. Jesus was still there waiting. As John XIII said the Church is like a fountain in a village: everyone can come and get the water of love and consolation. Let it also be so for us, sinners that we are but loved by the Lord who in the poor and with the warmth and power of his Word comes to encounter us, and to take away our thirst and our hunger with the bread that fills.