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Word To Life
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Sunday Scripture Readings: Feb. 24, 2008
By Jeff Hedglen
Catholic News Service
February 24, 2008 Third Sunday of Lent
Cycle A Readings:
1) Exodus 17:3-7
2) Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
Gospel: John 4:5-42
I was 26 when my mother died after a two-year battle with cancer. This event in my young life was traumatic, to say the least, but it was not marked with tears. This surprised me. When she was diagnosed I was sad but didn’t cry; I chalked that up to hoping for the best. I figured I would cry if things got worse. In time, things got worse, and still I did not cry. This time I brushed it off saying I would cry at the funeral. The funeral came and went and still no tears flowed.
Though I was young and a man, I figured it was OK to cry at my mother’s funeral, and the fact that I did not caused me to worry. I sought help from a counselor.
My experience in counseling was the second most important event in my life besides my conversion to Jesus. With the help of my counselor, I discovered that my emotions had been buried. Week after week they were slowly excavated, and soon a more whole me was revealed, a person with a shelf full of wide-ranging emotions, not just humor and anger.
Lent is a time of discovery, renewal, sacrifice, sorrow and most of all healing. Healing waters await the catechumenate at the Easter Vigil, and the waters of our baptism continue to penetrate our lives, gradually weathering away all the sin that covers our true selves.
It is such a moment that finds Jesus at Jacob’s well giving living water to the Samaritan woman. True to form, Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter and reaches into the deepest recesses of the woman, revealing past hurt and the effects that linger still. Instead of condemnation, Jesus offers healing. Instead of death, he offers life in the form of living water.
Through my counselor, Jesus told me everything I needed to hear, and this gave birth to a well of tears, living water that still flows today. Yet I know Jesus has more for me. So I stand next to the woman at the well saying “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty.”
QUESTIONS:
How has the living water of Jesus quenched your thirst? What have your encounters with Jesus revealed about you?
SCRIPTURE TO BE ILLUSTRATED:
“Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).
Copyright © 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS Word To Life column may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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