3rd Sunday of Lent 2008

This time of year seems to have many of those great award ceremonies . However, there seems to be as much interest in what the women are wearing as there is for the music that they produce or the films that they are in. There seems to be a lot of trivial information on the likes and dislikes of the artists at these occasions. I suppose it is interesting enough to know more personal details about people who sings songs, act in films, are famous footballers. But when it is spun out you realise it is a bit trivial, a bit superficial, a bit with out substance. It has the aim to create a cult of celebrity and then there is that awful thing about the fact that the media like to build people up and then knock them down.

Today in the Gospel we are introduced to a woman who has come to a well to gather some water. At first we don’t know much about her. She is certainly not like any of those artists attending music or film awards. But as we think about her she is not unlike many women around the world. She is dealing with the essentials of life. Providing water, providing food and clothes, keeping things together. She is like many women around the world who work from earliest hour to the last hour. She is like many women who don’t count the cost to themselves, but pour out their lives for others. We never know her name, but we recognise her, she is like many people we have known.

On this visit to the well she meets a stranger to her but not to us – he is no stranger to us he is the holy son of God, the person whom the Gospel will call the Saviour of the World. They should not talk: he is a Jew she is a Samaritan, she a woman he a man, he is a stranger and she belongs here. For him there are no barriers, no walls. They strike up a conversation. As it turns out they talk about all sorts of things water and thirst, religion and about the course of their life. It is such a human thing. But there is something different in the conversation when they are talking they are really talking about deeper things. This conversation is about deeper things, he offers her living water, she wants water whereby she will not be thirsty. It goes beyond a conversation about ordinary things: this is about the human beings search for things that don’t pass away. I will give you water whereby you will not be thirsty again, he promises.

I think we touch here the very heart of faith. It is the things that yearns with in us for living water whereby we might not be thirsty, the thing that doesn’t pass away, the thing that doesn’t wear out, the thing that is infinite, namely God himself. There are maybe things that we want but we end up being as thirsty or unsatisfied as were before. But when we drink this living water that God offers us then it is as if we are satisfied.

Returning to that image of the woman in the well. Does that woman not symbolise many men and women? People who are weighed down, burdened, people who carry a heavy load. People who have many responsibilities and tasks. People who work hard to provide for others and who don’t count the cost to themselves. Here she is being offered a lighter load. Water whereby she will not be thirsty, water so that she doesn’t have to bring her bucket here any longer. Of course she want the water, who wouldn’t.

But is that not what faith is. We have found water that gives us meaning and purpose. We have found water that satisfies our parched throats and our thirst for God.

People want to reduce faith to certain moral norms, to duties and responsibilities. But is faith not that the realisation that we have experienced the living God in our life. Does faith not then inspire us, give us courage, give us a different way at looking things. Do we not feel ourselves changed.

Lent shouldn’t be about dragging ourselves to do things. It shouldn’t be a torture. It should be about realising that we have tasted living water, an experience of God that gives sense to everything.

Let me ask what you are doing for Lent. Giving up chocolate; drink; eating less. Have you committed yourself to more prayer – to be at Mass, to reflect more, to make a good confession. Have you tried to be more charitable , more caring to the poor. What are you doing ? Whatever we are doing we realise that everything must start from this experience – we are able to touch God, he gives us living water whereby we will not be thirsty again. This is the heart of everything. Top Comment on this Homily