Third Sunday of Lent (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 11, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil
March 11, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the short homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us tomorrow on the Third Sunday of Lent.
• The Church has us focus on the life-changing conversation Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promised that he would leave all of his other sheep behind and go in search of whichever sheep of his was lost. This Sunday we see him putting that truth into action, in his encounter with the Liz Taylor of her day, who had married five times already and was then living with a sixth man who was not her husband. She was a symbol of what had happened to her Samaritan people, which had intermarried with five succeeding invading nations and began to worship their gods, but now were pretending to worship the one true God, but doing so not according to the Covenant but on their own mountain. The woman’s behavior had led to her being ostracized, as was evidenced by her going alone to draw water at the well at high noon, at the height of the piercing sun, when no one else for obvious reasons would have been there. Had she gone at cooler times in the early morning or late afternoon, she would have been the butt of criticism from other women for her past and present. Jesus went to await her at the most brutal moment of the day. In his conversation with her, not only did he break two social conventions — that Jews never spoke to Samaritans and that men never spoke to unrelated women alone — but most importantly he taught her and through her us about the two essential realities about our spiritual life: God’s grace, symbolized by the “living water” he describes, and our desire or “thirst” for that water.
• Upon the Cross, Jesus said, “I thirst,” and his whole life was an insatiable quest to give us that spring of living water gushing up within us to eternal life. Just like our body cannot exist without water — the human body is in fact 72 percent water — neither can our soul survive without this living water. Jesus, through whom both our body and soul were created, knows both realities, and came as the divine physician to give the needed soul-sustaining remedy to the woman at the well and to each of us.
• What exactly is this “living water”? It is nothing short of God’s divine life — what we call in theology the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. The reference to water is an obviously link to Baptism with the gift of spiritual filiation that it brings, but the connection does not stop there. In one part of the Gospel, Jesus identifies the living water as the presence of the Holy Spirit; in another, he identifies it as his own presence through the holy Eucharist. The living water refers to all of these realities, the presence of God in the soul as a result of the Sacraments. Jesus wants to give us this living water of divine filiation, of the Holy Spirit, of his life-giving flesh and blood, of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. But his will is not enough. He placed a condition on his own omnipotence; he can lead us to the living water but won’t force us to drink. He wants us freely to ask for it, to desire We see this very clearly in his invitation to the woman at the well: “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” And the woman used her freedom to say, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty!” In the same way, as God thirsts for us, we must have a thirst for him. In Psalm 63, this thirst for God is highlighted: “O God, you are my God, for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water” (Ps 63:1). That’s what God wants to help us say to him. “My soul pines for you!” “Give me that water!” He wants us to grasp that just as man does not live on bread alone, so we cannot live on water alone. We need living water, too, and must thirst for God more than we do water, just as Jesus calls us to labor more for the living Bread he gives us than we do for the food that perishes. If we really thirst for God, certain behaviors will follow. We will pray as much and as well as we can. We will get to know him much better in Sacred Scripture. We will make the sacrifices to cross the deserts of human life to adore Him and receive him in the Eucharist as often as we can. We will seek to quench his thirst in those who are needy.
• Many of us, however, will honestly admit that we don’t really thirst for God like we ought to, like a man in the desert would for water. Rather than having hearts out of which “flow rivers of living water,” our hearts can be stony, stubborn, and lifeless. Like Moses struck the rock in the desert and it gushed forth water, as we’ll see in this Sunday’s first reading, God wants to strike such hearts so that the rivers of Christ’s love can flow, but he wants us to ask for it, to give him willing permission. Our spiritual life is a little like a family that gets a company to come drill a well in their yard. Often they need to burrow through layers of rock and various geological formations to tap that underground stream or aquifer. But that’s only the beginning. They next need to keep that well free of leaves, debris, and various contaminants. Then they need to pipe that water into their house. And finally they have to use the water to give life to their daily activities. It’s the same way with our souls. We need to ask God to drill the well, to burrow through the various rocky strata, to go deep, to tap that source of living water in Baptism. We need to keep the well clean of the toxins of sin and free of the various debris that can clutter it up. We have to get that living water pumped into the various rooms of our life and put the water to use. And we need to drink that water and have it fill our souls, to use it to cleanse ourselves, to bathe in it, and to irrigate the various gardens of activity that characterize our life. Lent is time for us to examine that water system and help us to take advantage of that gift! It is the season to help us allow the water to flow unimpeded, through prayer, through fasting — which helps us to “clean the pipes” of spiritual rust — and through almsgiving, pouring out the living water of Jesus to others. Lent is a time in which, like the Samaritan woman, we leave our precious jug behind, are filled with living water, and begin to allow that gift to overflow and irrigate the world.
• In the last book of the Bible, in which Jesus speaks to us from within the heavenly Jerusalem, he reiterates what he said to the Samaritan woman, saying, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (Rev. 21:6). He will give it to us if only we thirst for it. He tells us in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness.” To thirst for sanctity is to thirst for God. Jesus promised that those who so thirst “shall be satisfied,” and he’s faithful to his promises. This Sunday, let us respond to Jesus’ invitation and say to him, “Give us that life giving water always!” Amen!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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