20200315
JESUS
GIVES US THE LIVING WATER
15 March, 2020, Sunday, 3rd
Week of Lent
Readings at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: Violet.
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First reading
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Exodus 17:3-7 ©
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Strike the rock, and water will flow from it
Tormented by
thirst, the people complained against Moses. ‘Why did you bring us out of
Egypt?’ they said. ‘Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children too, and
my cattle?’
Moses
appealed to the Lord. ‘How am I to deal with this people?” he said. ‘A little
more and they will stone me!’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take with you some of
the elders of Israel and move on to the forefront of the people; take in your
hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I shall be standing
before you there on the rock, at Horeb. You must strike the rock, and water
will flow from it for the people to drink.’ This is what Moses did, in the
sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah because
of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the
test by saying, ‘Is the Lord with us, or not?’
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Responsorial
Psalm
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Psalm 94(95):1-2,6-9 ©
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O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come,
ring out our joy to the Lord;
hail
the rock who saves us.
Let
us come before him, giving thanks,
with
songs let us hail the Lord.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
Come
in; let us bow and bend low;
let
us kneel before the God who made us:
for
he is our God and we
the
people who belong to his pasture,
the
flock that is led by his hand.
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice!
‘Harden
not your hearts as at Meribah,
as
on that day at Massah in the desert
when
your fathers put me to the test;
when
they tried me, though they saw my work.’
O
that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’
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Second reading
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Romans 5:1-2,5-8 ©
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The love of God has been poured into our hearts
Through our Lord
Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it
is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which
we can boast about looking forward to God’s glory. And this hope is not
deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit which has been given us. We were still helpless when at his appointed
moment Christ died for sinful men. It is not easy to die even for a good
man – though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared
to die – but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us
while we were still sinners.
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Gospel
Acclamation
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Jn4:42,15
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Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
Lord,
you are really the saviour of the world:
give
me the living water, so that I may never get thirsty.
Glory
to you, O Christ, you are the Word of God!
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Gospel
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John 4:5-42 ©
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A spring of water welling up to eternal life
Jesus came to the
Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the
well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus
said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ His disciples had gone into the town to buy
food. The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a
Samaritan, for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with
Samaritans. Jesus replied:
‘If
you only knew what God is offering
and
who it is that is saying to you:
Give
me a drink, you would have been the one to ask,
and
he would have given you living water.’
‘You have no
bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep: how could you get this living
water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and
drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus replied:
‘Whoever
drinks this water
will
get thirsty again;
but
anyone who drinks the water that I shall give
will
never be thirsty again:
the
water that I shall give
will
turn into a spring inside him,
welling
up to eternal life.’
‘Sir,’ said the
woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never
have to come here again to draw water.’ ‘Go and call your husband’ said Jesus
to her ‘and come back here.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ He said
to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”; for although you have had
five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’ ‘I
see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this
mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to
worship.’ Jesus said:
‘Believe
me, woman,
the
hour is coming
when
you will worship the Father
neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You
worship what you do not know;
we
worship what we do know:
for
salvation comes from the Jews.
But
the hour will come
– in
fact it is here already –
when
true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:
that
is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.
God
is spirit,
and
those who worship
must
worship in spirit and truth.’
The woman said to
him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is coming; and when he
comes he will tell us everything.’ ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am
he.’
At
this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a
woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you
talking to her?’ The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town
to tell the people. ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did;
I wonder if he is the Christ?’ This brought people out of the town and they
started walking towards him.
Meanwhile,
the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said,
‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples asked one another,
‘Has someone been bringing him food?’ But Jesus said:
‘My
food is to do the will of the one who sent me,
and
to complete his work.
Have
you not got a saying:
Four
months and then the harvest?
Well,
I tell you:
Look
around you, look at the fields;
already
they are white, ready for harvest!
Already
the reaper is being paid his wages,
already
he is bringing in the grain for eternal life,
and
thus sower and reaper rejoice together.
For
here the proverb holds good:
one
sows, another reaps;
I
sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for.
Others
worked for it;
and
you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’
Many Samaritans
of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony when
she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’, so, when the Samaritans came up to
him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and when he
spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman, ‘Now we no
longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we
know that he really is the saviour of the world.’
JESUS GIVES US THE
LIVING WATER
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [EX 17:3-7; PS 95:1-2, 6-9; ROM 5:1-2, 5-8; JN 4:5-42 (or
>< 4:5-15.19-26.39-42)]
We are all thirsting for
many things in life, from very basic needs to luxury. Water, of course, is one of the basic
things of life. Without water we cannot survive. So we can
understand the anger and frustration of the Hebrews wandering in the desert
deprived of water. “Tormented by thirst, the people complained against Moses.
Why did you bring us out of Egypt? They said. ‘Was it so that I should die of
thirst, my children too, and my cattle?'” So, too, the woman of
Samaria. She was coming to Jacob’s well day after day to draw water.
However, the truth is
that few are satisfied with the basic needs of life. We want something more. But many of
us do not know what this “something more” we are seeking is. When one’s
material or physical need is fulfilled, we find ourselves seeking something
else to satisfy our thirst and hunger. This was the case of the
Hebrews. The Israelites grumbled again, “If only we had died by
the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate
all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to
starve this entire assembly to death.” Then the Lord gave them manna from
heaven and sent them quail for their meat. (cf Ex 16)
The Samaritan Woman too
was seeking living water.
Jesus said, “If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying
to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have
given you living water.” The woman asked, “Sir, give me some of that
water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to
draw water.'” Again, she was mistaken. She was thinking of getting
easy water from a running stream instead of drawing water from a stagnant
well. It was not water that she was seeking.
Indeed, all of us, like
the Israelites and the Samaritan woman, are not simply asking for the material
and physical needs of life, regardless whether they are basic or luxury. What is this something more? We are
looking for affective and spiritual needs. We hunger for relationships.
We hunger for relationship with God and with our fellowmen.
Our heart will remain restless, as St Augustine tells us, until it rests in
God. This was what the Samaritan woman was pursuing in her heart.
She had five husbands, none of whom worked out unfortunately. She was
lonely and her life was meaningless. She also did not have God in her
life.
The five husbands were
also symbolic of Israel chasing after false gods. The Israelites from the Northern
Kingdom, after being conquered by the Assyrians, inter-married with the pagans
and also imported five deities from Assyria. (cf 2
Kgs 17:29-35) The Lord told the woman, “You worship what you do not
know; we worship what we do know; for salvation comes from the Jews.” The
Samaritans did not know the true God because their religion was contaminated by
the pagans. She was just existing but not living. Just working and
keeping herself physically alive was meaningless. Going to draw water
everyday was drudgery. No matter how rich or successful we are, without
meaningful and lasting relationships, life has no meaning or purpose. If
life is just about work and the pursuit of our ambitions, we have missed out
the meaning of life. It is about loving and serving God and our fellowmen.
However, we are not
ready or capable of relationship with God or with our brothers and sisters
unless we come to know who we really are. The truth is that the woman was not
acknowledging her pain, loneliness and frustration. She did not know
herself. So Jesus had to gradually, in a non-threatening way, lead her to
discover her true identity. Only when she discovered herself, the source
of all her resentment and unhappiness, was she released from her own
prison. Jesus revealed herself to herself.
Jesus also revealed to
her how to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. He said, “But the hour will come –
in fact it is here already – when true worshippers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants. God is
spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus
too has come to reveal to us who the true God is because the Messiah came from
the Davidic Dynasty. Most of all, Jesus came to teach us that true
worship is not a matter of rituals or shrines but we worship in the Spirit of
Jesus, in love and sincerity, and manifest our love for God in a life of
charity.
Truly, Jesus is the
living water that can satisfy our hearts. Nothing else can give us lasting happiness in
life or quench our thirst. The water that came out of the rock in the
first reading prefigures the Lord who gave us His Spirit through His
death. On the cross, “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a
spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” (Jn 19:34)
This is a fulfillment of the prophecy made by our Lord Himself when He
declared, “‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever
believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living
water will flow from within them.’ By this, he meant the
Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to
that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been
glorified.” (Jn 7:37-39) This Spirit was poured out at His death.
Indeed, through the
Sacrament of Baptism, the Lord gives us the Spirit of His Father, which He has
received. This Spirit is
the love of God in person. St Paul wrote, “This hope is not deceptive,
because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit
which has been given us.” Through the waters of Baptism, we are
reconciled with God, given new life in Christ and filled with the Spirit of His
love. “We were still helpless when at his appointed moment Christ died
for sinful men. But what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us
while we were still sinners.”
We are therefore justified
in Christ and saved by Him. Christ has broken down all barriers
separating us and God, regardless
of who we are; our nationality, social status or race. By speaking to the
woman at the well, Jesus removed all social barriers. By asking water from
the woman, Jesus broke all religious barriers that prevented the Jews from
eating or drinking from the utensils of the Samaritans.
Faith in Christ is the
condition. Faith is the prerequisite for the sacrament of baptism.
Faith is the pre-requisite to be justified in Christ. Today, we are invited to be like the woman
of Samaria, taking the courage to be honest with ourselves, breaking down the
wall of distrust of God, and opening ourselves up to the Lord, recognizing Him
as prophet, the Christ and the Saviour of the world. The responsorial
psalm says, “O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your
hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the desert.'”
Upon discovering Jesus, “the woman put down her water
jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people, ‘Come and see a
man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the
Christ?'” The water jar is a symbol of all that is earthly. She was
looking for happiness among the things of this world. But having been revealed
the illusion of happiness in this material world, she left behind her worldly
desires and sought Jesus instead. She became a believer of the Lord for
she now knew that Jesus was more than just a respectable man, more than a
prophet, more than just the Christ but the Savior of the world.
Once we have encountered
the Lord, we too must go out and be His apostle. “Come and see a man who
has told me everything I ever did;
I wonder if he is the Christ?” This brought people out of the town and they
started walking towards him.” And so they invited Jesus to stay with them
longer. “Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength
of the woman’s testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done.
Then they said to the woman, “Now we no longer believe because of what you told
us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of
the world.”” We who are believers of Christ must also be more than
a disciple but an apostle to others by announcing Him to all who seek the
living water.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All
Rights Reserved
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