3rd Sunday of Lent
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our Lady of the Rosary, NOLA
Indeed:
“the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will
worship the Father in Spirit and truth. . .” The hour is here and
here we are, worshiping the Father in Spirit and in truth. How else
can we worship the Father but through His Spirit and in His truth?
“Is the Lord in our midst or not?” Hasn't “the love of God been
poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”? Of course!
“God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners
Christ died for us.” While we were still
sinners. Not b/c we did something deserving. Not b/c we had achieved
holiness w/o Christ. But even while
we were sinning, Christ died for us. Moses, Paul, and Jesus himself
testify to the Father's unbounded love for us. Despite their
kvetching
in the desert, He provides water for His wandering people. Despite
our sin, He provides the Christ for our salvation. Despite our
frequent infidelity, He sends His Holy Spirit so that we might
worship Him and come back to Him in holiness. In every instance of
our disobedience, God makes the first move to restore us. He takes
the initiative and gives us everything we need to find our way home.
He loves first, so that we might begin to love.
What
does love have to do with Lent? Well, if Lent is about finding and
eliminating the sources of our disobedience, then the Sundays of Lent
are all about paying
attention to God's
mercy. The Psalmist sings this evening, “Come, let us sing joyfully
to the Lord. . .Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before
the Lord who made us.” And we might rightly wonder why we should
bother with all this singing and rejoicing and kneeling. We're two
weeks into our Lenten desert and if we are doing it right, we know
all too well how far we are from God. But if we wallow in that
distance, if we cling to the length and depth of our sin, we will
miss the Good News that Christ came to deliver. He says to the woman
at the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst. . .”
And then we would miss our chance to say to Christ, “Lord, give me
this water, so that I may not be thirsty. . .” Yes, Lent is about
identifying and tackling our sins. But while
we are identifying and tackling our sins, Christ stands with us,
pouring out for us the Waters of Eternal Life. This is why we pause
during Lent – to pay attention when he says, “I am your Savior.”
The
Sundays of Lent all about hearing the GOOD News of Lent. So, here’s
what we are supposed to hear from the gospel: the preaching of the
Good News is to go out to everyone, excluding no one not even those
with whom we have significant religious differences. The Living Water
of God’s grace is immeasurably deep and awesomely wide. We receive
this Water as a gift, given without price or debt, liberally
handed-over in love, and dipped from the well of Christ Jesus
himself.
The
Living Water of God’s saving grace flows easily and freely over the
dirtiest feet, into the foulest mouths, through the most unclean
hands, and washes away any and all afflictions.
The
Living Water of God’s grace waters the cruelest heart,
softens the hardest head, and tames the most passionate stomach. No
dam or pipe or bucket or cloud is strong enough, high enough, deep
enough or empty enough to hold the gifts that our Father has to give
us.
The
Living Water of God’s grace is the Bridge between blood enemies;
the Way across all anger and pride; the Means of health and beauty;
the only Gate to truth and goodness. Built on the confession of Peter
and guarded against Hell itself, the Church floats on its ocean,
unsinkable, unshakable, His Ark.
The
Living Water of God’s grace wets everything it touches, stains
anything it falls upon, and indelibly marks for eternal life anyone
who will say with the Samaritan woman, “Lord! Give me this water.”
We
learn from the gospel that we cannot worship I AM THAT I AM on any
single mountain; in one church building and not another; nor can we
pray in Jerusalem alone, Rome alone, Paris alone, or New Orleans
alone. We learn that we are to worship the LORD in Spirit and in
Truth, not with spirits and lies, but in His Spirit and His Truth;
alone with Him and all together, we pray where we are, when we are,
and we ask for one gift: voices eager to praise His glory, voice set
afire with the Word of God’s mercy.
Jesus
says to the woman, “I am [the Christ], the one who is speaking with
you.” When she tells her neighbors this truth, they come to Christ
and listen to the Word. For two days they listen. When the time for
him to leave comes, the Samaritans say to the woman, “We no longer
believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we
know that this is truly the savior of the world.” If she had held
her tongue, quieted her voice and failed to speak the Truth, they
would not have heard. Where then would they find hope?
Paul
writes to the Romans: “…hope does not disappoint, because the
love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us.” If we are not disappointed in the
grace we have received, how much more passionate are we then about
speaking a simple truth, just one word to our neighbors about the
gift of life we have received. There is no hope on the dry land of
secular religion or science; no hope in the mouths of politicians or
professors; there is no hope in test tubes or books. No hope that
lasts. Our hope, our one hope is the depth, the breadth, the width of
our Father’s immeasurable mercy – the sky-wide and valley-deep
well of His free flowing and ever-living Water. Walking this desert
of Lent to the Cross, let Paul remind you: “…only with difficulty
[do you] die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person
[you] might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners [still sinners!] Christ died for
us.”
The
first move in Love and Mercy belongs to God alone. The second move is
ours alone. Do we drink from the saving well, or not? Do we rejoice
with Christ, or grieve without him? Tomorrow you return to the
desert. Will you go back thirsty, or filled with the water of Eternal
life?
_______________________
Follow HancAquam or Subscribe -----?
