Lent 3A SAmaritan woman

God cares about you! Samaritan story

My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
We have this long Gospel today which is a wonderful expression of Jesus' love for us and for all people.
In the Book of Exodus the people thirst, but they don't want God's will. They want their physical thirst satisfied. Most of us are just the same. We want our physical needs satisfied before we will give our attention to the Lord. We almost refuse to walk with God unless He takes care of us.
From God's side we are always taken care of, but not always in the way that we want to be taken care of. God knows us more than we know ourselves. Nothing ever happens in our life in which God’s love is not present. Even the worst things that we can imagine happening to us can still bear the imprint of God's love and care for us.
Do you know the legend of the Cherokee {cherrekee} Indian youth's rite of Passage?
His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.
He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!
Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone my dear brothers and sisters. Even when we don't know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him. Just because you can't see God, doesn't mean He is not there.
The music for the Broadway show Les Miserables, gives us a song sung by one of the play’s principal characters, Fantine. Her song is a lament. She sings a sad song to her lost youth, her lost innocence, and her lost beauty. It reflects a song many of us have in our hearts as she sings:
"I had a dream that life would be so different than the hell I'm living, So different now than what it seemed, Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."
The first reading from Book of Exodus, presents us with a whole nation of people feeling that burden, experiencing that depression, that despair. Only a little while earlier God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt, protecting from Pharaoh's pursuing armies by parting the Red Sea for Moses and then swallowing up Pharaoh's army in those same Red Sea waters. Moses spoke to them of God's love for them and pointed out that God's Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey was soon going to be theirs. Yet here they were wallowing in self-pity, hurting and angry with God. Worst of all they were longing to return back to slavery in Egypt.
My dear brothers and sisters, does the present look bleak to you now'? Don’t repeat Israel's mistake. The condition in which you find yourself now doesn't have to be the situation in which you'll find yourself in the future. The present doesn't put handcuffs on you and imprison you. God still has His power and with that power, your life can change. Remember, always remember, that without God you are powerless and can do relatively little. Without God you can accomplish nothing. But with God there is nothing you cannot accomplish. With God's power there's a whole lot about your future that will change. With God, things can and will change. You just ask Him for that eternal life giving water.
We should never lose our heart when we pray because God will make a way. Jesus will give you Living water. He takes care of all. Don Moen writes:-God will make a wayWhere there seems to be no wayHe works in ways we cannot seeHe will make a way for meHe will be my guideHold me closely to His sideWith love and strength for each new dayHe will make a way He will make a wayWhy does Jesus make such a tremendous impact on the Samaritan woman? Because for the first time in her life she meets a man who really understands her, probably the first man to know her so well without rejecting her. Jesus never ever rejects us.
The Samaritans receive the Good News not through the “Twelve Disciples” but through a Samaritan sinful woman!
They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." (4:42)
We see that there are two stages in the believing or conversion process: 1). believing because of what someone told us about Jesus, and Number 2. believing because we have come personally to know Jesus ourselves.
What is that miraculous water, that life-giving water of life? That water is LOVE. For God, the wellspring and source and of all life, is Love. This divine water of the Holy Spirit, this fountain of life, is what we call also the “grace”. The Holy Apostle St. John says "God is love, and he that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him." (I John 4: 16). So my dear brothers and sisters let us ask today for that living water so that we will not thirst again.
One day a priest came to visit a lady who was gravely ill… he said to her… ‘I will pray for your healing.” The lady replied… “yes Father, do that, I believe in that… but also… pray that I will experience God’s peace… if I am healed, I will get sick again, maybe many times, and each time I will be dismayed and fearful…. unless I learn to put myself in God’s hands, whatever may come… - so, above all pray for peace… for that will last….”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.