3rd Sunday of Lent
H. Axel Hernandez, L.C.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christ, our King, Thy Kingdom come!
Preparatory prayer (to put me in the presence of God)
Lord, help me to trust You without limits.
Gospel of the day (to guide your meditation)
From the Holy Gospel according to John 4, 5-42
At that time Jesus came to a town of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. Jesus, weary from his journey, sat down at the well's edge. It was about noon.
Then a woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink” (His disciples had gone into town to buy food). The Samaritan woman answered him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman?” (For the Jews do not treat Samaritans). Jesus said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”.
The woman answered him, “Sir, you have not even wherewith to draw water, and the well is deep; how can you give me living water? Are you more than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, from which he and his sons and his cattle drank?” Jesus answered him, “Whoever drinks of this water is thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”.
The woman said to him, “Lord, give me some of this water so that I will never be thirsty again and will never have to come here to draw it. He said to her, ”Go and call your husband and come back.“ The woman answered him, ”I have no husband.“ Jesus said to her, ”You are right in saying “I have no husband.‘ You have had five, and the one now is not your husband. In that you have spoken the truth.’.
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know. For salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is already here, when those who want to worship truly will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for that is how the Father wants to be worshipped. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”.
The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah (i.e., Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will give us an account of everything”. Jesus said to her, “It is I who am speaking to you”.
At this the disciples came and were surprised that he was conversing with a woman; yet no one said to him, “What are you asking her, or what are you talking to her about?” Then the woman left her pitcher, went into the town, and began to say to the people, “Come and see a man who has told me all that I have done; is not this the Messiah?” They went out of the village and set out on their way to where he was.
In the meantime, his disciples were urging him, “Master, eat”. He said to them, “I have for food a food that you do not know”. And the disciples said to one another, “Did anyone bring him anything to eat? Jesus said to them, ”My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work. Do you not say that there are still four months to harvest? Well then, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already golden for the harvest. Already the harvester receives his wages and stores up fruit for eternal life. From this the saying is true: “One is he who sows and another who reaps‘. I sent you to reap what you had not worked for. Others have labored and you have reaped their fruit’.
Many Samaritans in that village believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony: ‘He told me all that I have done’. When the Samaritans came to where he was, they begged him to stay with them, and he stayed there for two days. Many more believed in him when they heard his word. And they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you have told us, for we ourselves have heard him and know that he is indeed the savior of the world.”.
Word of the Lord.
Meditate on what God tells you in the Gospel
Our heart is thirsty. It is the greatest thirst that man can have. Sometimes, unfortunately, we seek to quench it with moments of debauchery and surrender to passions. But once they have passed, we realize that everything remains the same. The thirst of our heart cannot be satisfied by the material. This thirst goes beyond superficiality and appeals to the deepest and most intimate part of our heart. Man has a void in the form of God and only He can fill it. Our infinite thirst can be quenched only by his infinite love.
As Christ knows the Samaritan woman, so he knows each one of us. Christ comes to meet us and, as we come to know him, we are touched by his love for us, which gives us life and life in abundance. Like the Samaritan woman, let us renew our amazement at his great love and lead people to the fountain of water that quenches the thirst of our heart. «You have made us Lord for Yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in You.» (St. Augustine)
«Give me to drink is what the Lord asks and is what he asks us to say. And in saying it, we open the door to our tired hope to return without fear to the founding well of our first love, when Jesus passed our way, looked at us with mercy, and chose us and asked us to follow him; in saying it we recover the memory of that moment in which his eyes met ours, the moment in which he made us feel that he loved us, that he loved me, and not only in a personal way, but also as a community».
(Homily of H.H. Francis, January 26, 2019)
Dialogue with Christ
This is the most important part of your prayer, prepare yourself to talk with much love with the One who loves you.
Purpose
Propose a personal one. The one that involves the most love in response to the Beloved... or, if you believe that this is what God is asking of you, live what is suggested below.
Make an examination of conscience of how I have been living Lent as a time to re-center my life in Christ.
Farewell
We thank You, Lord, for all Your benefits, You who live and reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Christ, our King!
Thy Kingdom come!
Most prudent Virgin, Mary, Mother of the Church.
Pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
