3rd Sunday of Lent
Cycle A
March 19, 2017
Life without
Faith
Have you ever thought about what life would be like
without God?
Or without Christ? Or
without faith?
I am thinking that we would lack a sense of identity,
because that depends, at least to some extent on having a sense of where we
came from and where we are going. We
would lack a sense of purpose, of what we are to do with our time on this
earth.
And we would lack a moral basis, a basis for knowing what
is good and bad. I think this is what
life would be like without faith in God and Christ.
Faith is crucial and this is what today’s gospel story is
about. Its message is very basic, very
fundamental.
For
What Are We Thirsting?
The bottom line of the whole story is Jesus asking us: are
we thirsting for something more?
Most of us have to spend a lot of our energy and time just
making a living and keeping up with things.
And beyond this, we can easily get caught up in wanting more and more
things to quench our thirst, things beyond the necessities – like a new SUV, the
latest iPhone, a wider screen TV, and on it goes.
None of these things is bad, but if we think about it, they
never quite satisfy us. They don’t satisfy
us forever or even for very long.
My hunch is that underneath all of this, we want a water
that will quench our thirst forever – something that will satisfy our deepest
human longings. And that is why Jesus
really catches the attention of this Samaritan woman today.
Without even being conscious of it, her fascination with Jesus
goes way beyond the issue of physical thirst.
She senses that there is something much more here.
Jesus is offering her a relationship that really quenches
our thirst – a relationship with himself, a relationship with God. He is inviting this woman and us to
faith.
Find
Faith in the Gospels
Today’s gospel story helps us with how we can come to
faith or to a fuller faith.
This happens for the Samaritan woman through her encounter
with Jesus. She listens to him and observes
him as a person.
We too can listen to and observe Jesus right here in the
gospels. That’s why they were written
and why we have them.
The gospels, I believe, need to be the center of our
spirituality and prayer life. Reading a
passage, allowing ourselves to encounter Jesus, carefully listening to what he
says and observing what he does – this is crucial for drawing us to faith or to
a fuller faith.
We
Believe You Are the Savior
At the end of today’s passage, the people say: “We know that this is truly the savior of
the world.”
So, if we make time to encounter Jesus in the gospels, we
can also come to this kind of vibrant, living faith. We will know him as the One who saves us from
a lack of identity by naming us the sons and daughters of the heavenly Father and
revealing that we will someday return home to this loving Father.
We will know him as the One who saves us from a life
without purpose by calling us to grow in his likeness and, in our own way, to
bring his presence to the world around us.
And we will know him as the One who saves us from a life without
direction by giving us a moral basis for life, a way for knowing what is good
and the strength to do it.
So, we are to make the space to encounter Jesus in the
gospels, listening to what he says and observing what he does. It is much like what the Samaritan woman does
at the well.
We are to make this the center of our prayer and
spirituality. And if we do this, we too will
be able to say with conviction, “We know
that this is truly the savior of the world.”
