COLLECT: “O GOD, AUTHOR OF EVERY MERCY AND OF ALL GOODNESS, WHO IN FASTING, PRAYER AND ALMSGIVING HAVE SHOWN US A REMEDY FOR SIN, LOOK GRACIOUSLY ON THIS CONFESSION OF OUR LOWLINESS, THAT WE, WHO ARE BOWED DOWN BY OUR CONSCIENCE, MAY ALWAYS BE LIFTED BY YOUR MERCY. THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, YOUR SON, WHO LIVES AND REIGNS WITH YOU IN THE UNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, GOD, FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN”.
Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2,5-8; Jn 4:5-42 or 4:5-15,19b-26,39a,40-42
“LORD, SATISFY MY SPIRITUAL HUNGER AND QUENCH MY SPIRITUAL THIRST”.
Our scriptures for this Sunday as usual, have so many lessons for us. However, for want of time and space, I am not able to do justice to all. I am therefore preparing a ‘Spiritual buffet’. If you are not able to taste all, take what you want. God bless you.
When we encounter or face challenging, problematic, and stressful moments or events in life, we are easily tempted to doubt and even suspect the good intentions of others, as well as the good intentions of God. The simple reason being that, naturally and humanly speaking, we want everything to be cosy and rosy for us, no stressful moments in life. These challenging and stressful moments could be characterised as types of hunger and thirst, and the need for solutions to satisfy and quench them. God and Moses, in the first reading, had very good intentions for bringing the Israelites out of Egypt from their slavery. But the lack of water they encountered in the desert was enough for them to doubt, suspect and turn against Moses and God. Thank God, as the Everlasting Food and Living Water, the Lord, through Moses, provided a solution.
Going forward, just as our physical bodies hunger and thirst for physical food and drink, so do our souls hunger and thirst for spiritual food and drink. When we do not satisfy and quench the bodily hunger and thirst, the body becomes weak and frail and can collapse at any time. The same with the soul. The Israelites experienced this in the desert. In the case of the soul, when it is denied its food and drink to satisfy its hunger and to quench its thirst, it becomes vulnerable to Satan, temptations and sin.
We deliberately deny our souls their food and drink when we allow ourselves to be controlled by Satan and subsequently are led into committing sins. Sin takes us away from God, from listening to God’s word and from doing His Will – the food and drink for the soul.
God indeed has been spoken of in scripture as living water whom people thirst for as one thirsts for water (cf. Ps 42:1ff; Ps 36:8; Is 55:1ff; Jer 2:13; 17:13 Zec 13:1). This goes to confirm what Jesus told Satan in the desert at the First Temptation that ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but needs every word that God speaks’ (Mt 4:4; Jn 4:34).
In this Sunday’s Gospel, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman has given us a lot of great lessons regarding spiritual food and drink for our souls. Jesus presents himself as the giver of living water and anyone who drinks this water will never thirst again for, this water will become a fresh, bubbling spring within such a person, giving him/her eternal life.
It must be noted that this conversation should not be taken literally as the woman did at first, but should be symbolically interpreted and understood as it contains some theological implications and truths. In the first place the woman took Jesus’ words literally as she mistakenly believed that if she received the water that Jesus would offer her, she would never thirst again let alone having to go to the well at a time that nobody was there to see her. She accepted Jesus’ message because she thought this could make her life easier. This was understandable in the sense that the woman was living an isolated life; she could not associate or go with other women to the well to draw water at the right time (morning or evening). She was shunned because of her many sins (‘having five husbands and the one she was currently living with was not even her husband’). She came at noon probably to avoid meeting people who knew her reputation.
There are lots of Christians who are only ready to accept Christ’s message so long as it satisfies and quenches their physical hunger and thirst. When they no longer get that satisfaction or when it is delayed in coming, they run here and there looking for satisfaction. Others too, like the “Thirsting Israelites” in our first reading, due to lack of faith may grumble and question the presence of God in their lives.
One thing we must note is that we can pretend and hide our true selves or identities from fellow human beings but we cannot do that before God. Jesus knows all about our private life (Ps 139) and he, through his word and the “Holy Spirit who has been given to us”, will always touch and expose before us all our hidden secrets and if we permit him, he will move us to transformation and renewal. The Samaritan woman got her share. Let us also allow Jesus through his word and the Holy Spirit, to touch us during this season of Lent and lay bare our sins before us so that we can repent of them and be saved.
In their conversation, a popular theological issue came up, that is, the issue of the right place for worship (On this Mountain or Jerusalem). The woman by asking this question was probably trying to draw Jesus’ attention away from her deepest need. Some of us sometimes do that anyway. Remember the Dagaaba adage “Bang mang yele pog-nyaanga suong yele ong yele ka nye saan te ko waana (i.e. when they are talking about the old lady’s witch-craft, she announces that it is threatening to rain). Anyway, this offers Jesus the golden opportunity to touch on a much more important point, “the location of worship (Jerusalem). The location of worship, for Jesus, is not the important thing but the attitude of the worshiper. It is not where I worship that counts but how I worship. God expects genuine and true worship from us.
One can hop and move from place to place, from one god to another, from one Church or Pastor to the other (like the Samaritan woman hopping or moving from one man to another without becoming stable and committed to any one of them as a genuine and true husband) but if one does not have a true and genuine attitude toward one’s worship and is not faithfully dedicated and committed to one’s God, one’s worship will be a waste of time and a waste of one’s resources. Christians who hop and move from place to place, Church to Church and pastor to pastor are like “Gallamsey” operators, who, when they hear that gold has appeared somewhere they move quickly there to get their share of the gold and immediately move away to a new site where they hear gold has appeared, abandoning the old site.
There is a missionary note in this text. The woman left her water jar and went back to the town, calling the people to come and see a man who told her everything about her life. Eventually, the people came to see and finally believed in Jesus as the Saviour of the world after hearing him preach to them. We all have to do like the woman: bring Christ to others. We pray during this special season of Lent that God may increase our hope and faith in him, may he through the Holy Spirit pour once more his unfailing love into our hearts and move us to conversion from our idol worship of little faith, of hopping from one form of a god to the other, from one Church or Pastor to the other, to embrace and imitate the cross-carrying Christ as the ultimate source of our living and spiritual food and drink. Amen. Remember, “Human beings live not on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4), “Blessed are the poor in spirit: the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: they shall have their fill (Mt 5:3 and 6). Stay blessed and have a wonderful 3rd Sunday of Lent.
WE MEDITATE TODAY, SUNDAY, ON THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES: ‘THE RESURRECTION, THE ASCENSION, THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE ASSUMPTION, AND THE CORONATION’. (WE PRAY FOR FAITH, HOPE, LOVE OF GOD, GRACE OF A HAPPY DEATH AND TRUST IN MARY’S INTERCESSION) “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen”.
PRAYER: “AS WE RECEIVE THE PLEDGE OF THINGS YET HIDDEN IN HEAVEN AND ARE NOURISHED WHILE STILL ON EARTH WITH THE BREAD THAT COMES FROM ON HIGH, WE HUMBLY ENTREAT YOU, O LORD, THAT WHAT IS BEING BROUGHT ABOUT IN US IN MYSTERY MAY COME TO TRUE COMPLETION. THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN”.
Rev. Fr. Aloysius Kpiebaya, Catholic Diocese of Wa, UW/R, Ghana. (00233) 0207867239/0545462863. Email: aloybaya20@yahoo.com
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