Third Sunday of Lent

During the fourth, fifth, and sixth Sundays of Lent, there is the possibility of using alternate readings for these Sundays. The alternate is Cycle A, instead of Cycle B where we are this year, and is intended primarily for those involved in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, those who will be baptized and received into the Church at the Easter Vigil.

The image of water is all over these readings this weekend: the water which Moses drew forth at God's command to satisfy His people in the desert, and the well where the Samaritan woman went to draw her water, and Jesus as the living water. So there is the image and kind of the "Foot prints" of the Sacrament of Baptism, how that brought us into the life of Christ, and all that follows from that!

But, I would suggest that we look at the main person in this drama: the Samaritan woman herself. This powerful account is found only in St. John's Gospel, and teaches about our Faith, our relationship with Our Lord, and our eternal salvation in many ways. The meeting of the Samaritan woman with Christ was life changing and life giving for her. She was amazed , and went and told everyone. Here was someone whom she had never met, yet he knew all about her, and her past. He even knew that she had been married five times! She learned from him that she had been going to the wrong well, the wrong source time after time. The well of Jacob was the symbol of the wrong source she was going to for spiritual help, and she was never too satisfied. She learned that she was always going back to the wrong source for her life, and that is why she was never satisfied and always making the same mistakes, repeating the same patterns. She didn't get it until he said "Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again." The Lord had to point this out to her. When she finally realizes all of this, she knows she can no longer hide and has the strength to change her life: she has that strength from Christ the Lord!

We, too, are like her. There are times that we think we will never be satisfied, that we are stuck, that we will never get it "right". We are in a desert and keep going back to the wrong well. We keep going back to our old patterns and are never satisfied either. Maybe we, like the Samaritan woman, are constantly returning the wrong source, the wrong wells. Lots of those things in those wrong wells are not good for us: the well of all sorts of addictive behavior; the well of pride, envy, and resentments all mixed together with sin and hopelessness. And, it keeps drawing us back. Yet, with the Woman at the Well, we have another choice, another well of the living water of the life of Jesus Christ who is every bit as present to us today in Word and Sacrament as He was back then. Let us make that choice to stand in the presence of Jesus Christ, in the place of the woman at the wows us as thoroughly as he knew her, and he calls us to follow. Only, He, the Living Water, the Bread of Eternal Life can lead us away from the Wrong Source, that Wrong well, to Him, the Source of All Life: to holiness, wholeness in this life and Eternal Life to come: OUR SALVATION!