3rd Sunday in Lent - Year A - 19th March, 2017
A priest from Peru who lived among the poor and spoke on their behalf wrote a book called 'We Drink from Our Own Wells' It means drinking from the experiences of our own lives.
The Well as the Meeting Place
How beautiful and how important for a village to have a well of its own, especially in desert areas. Here, it is mostly women who meet in the early part of the day. It was often the place of match-making. It was at a well that Abraham found Rebecca as a wife for his son, Isaac; Jacob first met Rachel - later his wife - and Moses chose his wife, Zipporah.
God, in Jesus, meets us at the well today: John Ch.4: 5-42 .
The woman at the well today has no name! Why? Because she carried all of our names. You and I meet Jesus at the well. We are there at a different hour from all the others in the hot noon-day sun. We feel ourselves unworthy, like the woman - Jews don't speak to Samaritans. He asks her for a drink. He is thirsting for one more soul, for one more disciple.
At times in life we have to dig deeply.
The woman digs deeply, as deep as the well, into her own story - she has had five husbands. We can see that Jesus is a prophet who can read her life story.
Our own story will make us saints.
When we present our story honestly, as we often do in confession, Jesus becomes our personal teacher and leads us gently to a new way of living. (Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future!)
'The Church is the village fountain to which people come to quench their thirst' - St. John XXIII
Present yourself at the well today. Allow Jesus to be your teacher. Above all, if you can read and re-read this gospel today from John Ch 4: 5-42, you too will drink from your own well, the well of your life story, and Jesus will lead you to a place as deep as the well itself.
Fr. Micheal McCullagh C.M.
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