Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Introduction   

The Len­ten peri­od is gradu­ally pro­gress­ing towards the resur­rec­tion, the ful­fil­ment of sal­va­tion. The Len­ten Sundays con­tin­ue to enrich us with mes­sages that pre­pare us spir­itu­ally for the paschal mys­tery. While the First Sunday invited us not to allow food, power, and wealth suf­foc­ate our desire for God, the Second Sunday explained to us the right atti­tude in the pres­ence of God. This Third Sunday teaches us that God is spir­it and there­fore, must be wor­shipped in spir­it and truth. That is, our rela­tion­ship with God should not be reduced to mere extern­al exhib­i­tion to impress oth­ers. In John 3:35, the Evan­gel­ist reminded his listen­ers that God loves his son and has entrus­ted everything to him. The implic­a­tion is that etern­al life is now sub­jec­ted to believ­ing in the son, while reject­ing him implies not only los­ing etern­al life, but also attracts God’s anger. After this, Jesus con­tin­ues his jour­ney to Jer­u­s­alem with his dis­ciples. He is now in Sychar, a Samar­it­an town. Sychar isa small vil­lage near She­chem, pos­sibly the vil­lage of Askar, circa 1.5 km north­east of the fam­ous Jacob’s well. Accord­ing to Gen­es­is 33:18–19, Jac­ob bought some pieces of land here (near She­chem), and it was this land that he gave to Joseph (cf. Gen 48:21–22).

Message

This Sunday Gos­pel is full of les­sons. Per­mit me to out­line just few.

• By inter­act­ing with the Samar­it­an woman, Jesus con­tinu­ous to ful­fil the Laws and the Proph­ets as he announced at the begin­ning of the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mat­thew (5:17). Dis­crim­in­at­ing and keep­ing oth­ers away simply because they are dif­fer­ent from us or because they do not reas­on like us is absurd. It is an atti­tude of the men­tally and spir­itu­ally retarded. The only per­son that should be avoided is an evil per­son. Even the dis­ciples were sur­prised Jesus was chat­ting with a woman. Des­pite their long stay with him, they were unable to get rid of their old way of reas­on­ing and eval­u­at­ing things and people.
• We should be care­ful and watch­ful. We have become solely mater­i­al that we no longer under­stand the things of God. This was the case of the Samar­it­an woman. Because she was so much occu­pied with the neg­at­ive dis­crim­in­a­tion between the Samar­it­ans and the Jews, she was unable to under­stand the per­son she was dis­cuss­ing with. Because she was too mater­i­al, she could not under­stand and dis­tin­guish between her mater­i­al water and the spir­itu­al and life giv­ing water, which Jesus wanted to offer her. Does this reflect your life in any way?

Conclusion    

The meet­ing of Jesus with the Samar­it­an woman is a reflec­tion of our rela­tion­ship with God. What mat­ters is the spir­it and the inten­tion with which we wor­ship God, not where we do that. Nat­ur­ally, the spir­it determ­ines and con­di­tions how we wor­ship God. Jesus passed through Samaria to put an end to the enmity between people of the same des­cend­ant, the Jews and the Samar­it­ans. What about us? Dis­crim­in­a­tion every­where. We dis­crim­in­ate against those who do not reas­on like us. We dis­crim­in­ate and con­demn those who are not from the same tribe with us. Instead of tak­ing cor­rec­tions, we plan against those who cri­ti­cize our wrong­do­ings. The paschal peri­od is a good oppor­tun­ity to reflect on our rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er. Those who refuse to aban­don them­selves to God will con­tin­ue to be thirsty and to com­plain (cf. First Read­ing). May you put your­self in the con­di­tion that will enable you real­ize God’s pres­ence in your life, in your mis­sion, in your house, in your kit­chen, in your bed­room, in your place of work, in your shop, in the classroom, as you go out and as you come in, as you lie down and as you wake up. Do not reject and refuse the water of life because of your style of life. Shalom! 

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the Third Sunday of Lent is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 164–178. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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