Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent
Homily delivered by Fr Dominic Robinson SJ
What do we really really want? Since COVID and all it threw up in us – the loneliness, anxiety, despair, in the midst of a worsening cost of living crisis, hearing the desperation of many about the latest appalling threats coming from the government about detaining, deportation and barring of migrants fleeing abhorrent situations in their home countries, amid the struggles we as Christians face to live good authentic lives in society when often we are rightly accused of hypocrisy and complacency, what are we searching for? Amid all of this, which I have to say makes my blood boil just thinking of it all, what do we really really want? A question which may be posed when relationships become difficult, when we’re thinking about a course in life, and at so many points on our journey.
Many people around here I encounter, to be honest though, are just looking for some TLC, a bed for the night, a meal, advice on how to get a job, some respect for their human dignity in an increasingly cruel world where people don’t care less about their fellow sisters and brothers or who find it just too hard to engage amid my own loneliness, problems, struggles. And that I can understand. But my experience teaches me that it’s a question I have to ask of myself often. What am I really searching for in the midst of all of this? In fact it’s much easier just to keep on working hard, trying to be authentic, doing good, without stopping to think.
This Gospel is here to guide us in our discernment. It’s tied in to what are called the Scruitinies for those becoming Christian at Easter. But it’s for all of us, just as Lent is for all of us, an invitation to reflect on who I am and how I embrace the cross of Christ which we will venerate in just a few weeks time. And it teaches us we can’t do that alone. We can’t prepare to become a Christian alone. We can’t respond to the call to live out our Christian faith alone. We can’t be Church alone. We are called to walk together, together meaning not those of my own class, race, background, where I’m comfortable, but to expand the tent which is the Church to ask ourselves what we seek in dialogue with each other. And to place ourselves not in the comfort of my keeping the rules, being a good Catholic, but to place myself on the margins of that tent, even in the places where people are unrecognised, unloved, despised even, disregarded. And to go to the very heart of it, to the well in which we are all baptised, as we are in all our nothingness before God. And to encounter there the God who wants to talk to us in compassion and love.
Yes, for me, as I believe for the Early Church, in this gospel we see an encounter which gives rise to these questions of our very identity and motivation as Jesus meets this outcast Samaritan woman –and the dialogue here is extraordinary, in that it would be even be shocking to the religious professionals of the day. And this, by the way, isn’t a one-off for Jesus. It’s a theme in the Gospels. It’s who Jesus is and an invitation to us as the Church to what we are called to become. She is a Samaritan woman, the most unlikely person to accept it: and she is difficult - as indeed people can be… maybe you or I know people like her, or maybe we even recognise ourselves in her: she’s sarcastic, she’s cynical, she gives backchat, worst of all she doesn’t and won’t listen - she’s a nightmare who wouldn’t get through an interview – in fact we might want to push her away and yet…
Jesus breaks through: he is the model enabler, communicator, bridge builder – through his very personality he can reach and transform even the hardest of hearts, the most difficult of people. But of course He is, as we know with the hindsight of 2,000 years of theology, spirituality, encounter with Jesus and what he’s about, he is much more. This is in fact the only place in John’s Gospel where he says he is not just Son of God, Son of Man, but the Messiah: in his very being. He brings salvation: and this is why also this Gospel text is used for those becoming Christian - to initiate those about to receive sacraments at Easter to be invited into an encounter with Jesus and to get to know who he is as the one who alone can lead us to freedom and to peace as we make choices on our life’s journey.
And so this water which Jesus is offering is not just any water but is the water of baptism and that does two things:
Washes away Original Sin and marks us with special sacramental character – that is the marriage of heaven and earth in which grace is planted in our hearts: what’s that – the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God’s Presence in our very inner being
Calls us out of ourselves and our own lives & comfort zones – wherever we are - and, as the Samaritan Woman, Jesus confronts us and invites us to join him in bringing his message of salvation to all.
The message that he is the Messiah and through his Church He offers us that living water to heal and refresh us, to be the pledge of his loving presence and to call us to join him in spreading His Good News, is a message for all of us in our troubled Church and world. But it’s not just for us. May we be consoled by this message and by our celebration of the sacrifice of God’s love in the Mass today. May we know we are not alone but in the family of the Church and humanity are called to show this Christ who heals and frees us to others, especially in worrying times.