Third Sunday of Lent
We are a month away from Easter Sunday. Those words might sound exciting and comforting to you, as your Lenten penances only have 4 more weeks, but as a priest, four weeks to Easter is the busiest time of the year. In addition to the usual busyness, I am one of the assistant Masters of Ceremonies for the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday morning, so I’m assisting with a lot of the behind the scenes work. And, this is my first Easter here, so I’m learning how things have been done here before, and feeling my way through the liturgical celebrations as we enter into them. This is my favorite time of year in the Church calendar, but it’s also the most intense, and, if we let it be, the most powerful.
Today we hear our first long Gospel, prepping us for Holy Week. That’s not really why we have these long Gospels over the next three weeks, but it seems to work out that we have three long Gospels to prepare us for the Passion Narrative (a super long Gospel) that we will hear on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Today’s Gospel and the next two weeks’ Gospels are passages which deal with conversion, our major theme during Lent.
Today’s conversion story is about a woman of Samaria. And in her conversion, she comes to know Jesus more and more as the story continues. She starts out by referring to Jesus simply as “a Jew.” There’s no personal interaction, only referencing his religion. But Jesus draws her in more closely, as he offers her living water.
That encounter with Jesus leads to a change in tone. No longer is Jesus simply “you, a Jew,” but is now “Sir.” Jesus offers her something, and she’s interested in this “living water” she is speaking about. She likes the idea of never having to draw water again, because she is drawing water, alone, at the hottest part of the day. We’ll learn why later in this story.
Then Jesus changes the subject. And it is probably not the subject that modern, polite people would talk about. Jesus says, “‘Go call your husband,’” knowing full well what her situation is. This woman at the well is an adulteress, which is why she’s drawing water alone at the hottest part of the day. She has been married five times before, and the man she is living with currently is not her husband. She, of course, doesn’t want to admit this (who would?), and coyly says, “‘I do not have a husband.’” But Jesus reveals to her a part of her life that is not in order. This leads her to acknowledge Jesus in a different way; she comes to know Him more. He is not, “you, a Jew,” and he is no longer just “Sir.” He is, she says, a prophet.
But feeling a little uneasy about the trajectory of this conversation about her love life, she changes it to something she knows will divert attention away from her personal life: how to worship. Not much has changed today: if you want to get someone in a heated conversation, talk about how you think Mass should be celebrated. But Jesus doesn’t rebuff her question. He answers by stating that true worshippers will worship God the Father in Spirit and truth.
After talking to her about worshipping well, she is drawn to talk about the Messiah. And Jesus says to her, “‘I am he, the one speaking with you.’” Jesus reveals Himself and His mission. When she first started, she did not recognize Him as anything but a foreigner. Now she is led to think of Him as the Messiah, which in Greek, is translated πΈππππππ, which we translate as Christ. From there she tells everybody about Jesus, and they come to believe as well.
This process of conversion is present in our own lives, as well. It is present in the life of our Elect, Alexis, who is preparing for the Sacraments of Initiation. It is present in Chris, our Candidate, preparing to be received into the Church and receive the Sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist. But it is, or should be, present in each one of us. All of us have opportunities to grow closer to Jesus.
Some of us, honestly, don’t know Jesus that well. He is, we might say, only “you, a Jew.” He is a stranger to us. Some of us know about Jesus. Maybe we come to Mass every week, we do our duty, or we come because that’s what we’ve always done on Sundays. But Jesus still isn’t known well to us. He is simply a respected person. But we keep him at arm’s length, because we like the way we live, and we don’t want to have to change.
Some of us recognize Jesus as a good guy, a religious leader, someone who speaks for God (in other words, a prophet). We feel that tug at our soul for God, and maybe we’ve even had some religious experiences in our lives when we felt really close to God. But we still don’t recognize who Jesus fully is. Some of us recognize Jesus as the Messiah. We’re very active in our faith, but there are still some areas of our life that we don’t want Jesus to see, and we’re not sure we want to tell others about Jesus. That seems a bit pushy to tell others about Jesus.
No matter where we are in our faith, Jesus calls us to a deeper relationship with Him. Sometimes, as we grow closer to Him, He reveals our need for Him, a need that only He can satisfy, no matter how much we try to fill that need with other, passing things. Sometimes Jesus even points out our sins to us, in order to reject our sins and choose Him. But Jesus always wants us to grow close to Him, especially through our worship of the Trinity in Mass. And then He wants us to tell others about Him. Where are we in our conversion? We are never done; we can always grow closer to God. Are we open to letting God change our lives?
