Welcome to Finding God in Our Hearts. The following production Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is a weekly program of deep spiritual insight on Scripture, revealing the indwelling presence of God. Monsignor Fisher is a Catholic priest, a member of the Diocese of Dallas, and founder of the Pastoral Reflections Institute, a nonprofit in Dallas, Texas, dedicated to to enriching your spiritual journey. We appreciate your listenership and if you find this program valuable, please subscribe and share with your friends. This program is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you. Make your donation@pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com.
The Third Sunday of Lent the Opening Prayer O God, author of every mercy and of all goodness, who in fasting, prayer, and almsgiving have shown us a remedy for sin, look graciously on this confession of our lowliness, that we who are bowed down by our conscience may always be lifted up by your mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit and God forever and ever. Amen. A Reading from the Old Testament from the Book of Exodus 17. In those days in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock? So Moses cried out to the Lord, what shall I do with this people?
A little more and they will stone me. The Lord answered, moses, go over there in front of the people along with some of the elders of Israel, holding in your hand as you go the staff with which you struck the river. I’ll be standing there in front of you on the rock of Horeb. Strike the rock and the water will flow from it for the people to drink. This Moses did in the presence of the elders of Israel. The place was called Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, is the Lord in our midst or not the word of the Lord if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord. Let us acclaim the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us joyfully sing psalms to him. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Come, let us bow down in worship.
Let us kneel before the Lord who made us, for he is our God and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Oh that today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah, in the desert. For where your fathers tempted me, they tested me, though they had seen my works. If today you hear his voice harden not your hearts. A reading from St.
Paul’s letter to the Romans. Fifth chapter, first and second verse, and the fifth through the third verse. Brothers and sisters, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to the grace in which we stand. And we boast in hope of the glory of God. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. For Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appropriate time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person. Though perhaps for for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The Word of the Lord. The verse before the Gospel. Lord, you are truly the Savior of the world.
Give me living water that I may never thirst again. The Gospel is taken from St. John, fourth chapter, fifth through the 42nd verse. Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sichir, near the plot of the land that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon. A woman, a Samaria, came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? For Jews use nothing common with Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, give me a drink? You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you do not even have a bucket, and the cistern is deep. Where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks? Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
But 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. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come back the woman answered and said to him, I do not have a husband. Jesus answered her, you are right in saying I do not have a husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. But you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father. Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand. We worship what we understand because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ.
When he comes, he will tell us everything. Jesus said to her, I am he the one speaking with you. At that moment, his disciples returned and were amazed that he was talking with a woman. But still no one said, what are you looking for? Or, why are you talking with her? The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I’ve done.
Could he possibly be the Christ? They went out of the town and came to him. Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know. So the disciples said to one another, could someone have brought him something to eat? Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.
Do you not say, in four months the harvest will be here? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving payment and gathering crops for eternal life. So that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for.
Others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work. Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified. He told me everything I’ve done. When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them. And he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of His Word.
And they said to the woman, we no longer believe because of Your word For we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is truly the savior of the world, the Gospel of the Lord. Take the next few moments as we listen to this music to ponder the images and the thoughts that come to you as you listen to these readings. Sam. Sa. I want to begin my reflection on a part of the gospel. It underscores something really interesting, the role of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
When Jesus is talking to his disciples, he’s saying something about somebody has sown a field. When somebody sows a field, that’s usually the owner and a reaper comes in and cuts it and gets the wheat. And they celebrate together, each one having done a particular part of the work. And I believe that what this is saying is that the Old Testament, which took human beings who for centuries were maybe millions of years, not really very evolved, and they maybe lived a completely violent life, maybe. But whatever it was, they didn’t have a keen sense of justice. So as humans evolved, they became more like the God who created them.
And they started with the image of justice. And for almost 1800 years, they worked with that image in the Old Testament. God calling a people together, asking them to follow the law. And the law was what they had to do and what they shouldn’t do. At the heart of it was the Ten Commandments, had everything to do with living a life that was just fair and effective. So let’s take that image of this is the time that Jesus is announcing.
It’s time for the harvest. It’s time to make this bread from the wheat that is taken from the fields. And that bread is truth. The fullness of the truth of the Gospel comes in the New Testament. So let’s go and look at the two groups of people, the Old Testament people, the New Testament people. But what’s interesting about the Old Testament people that’s always been fascinating to me is that when God called them, he said so many things to them that were interesting.
He said. He said to them, you are my people. You’re my favorites. You’re the ones I love the most. I will make you strong. I’ll make you a great nation.
I will kill your enemies for you. I’ll. I am there for you. Now think about that, how that would impact those that listen to this story. Would they think they’re special? Would they think they’re privileged?
Would they think they’re in a great place, God is going to take care of all their wants and needs. And that was intentional in the sense of making a people know that God could be dedicated to them and have an impact on their life. It was the beginning of the evolution of people knowing who God is and how God works in their life. But it had a shadow and the shadow was that they became very demanding. And you have this first reading where throughout God calling his chosen ones on this journey, promising to take them to a place of milk and honey. In the process they are irritable, they’re hard to deal with, they’re stiff necked.
And when things aren’t going well for them, they turn to God in anger and say, you said you were going to take care of us. Where are you? What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you being there for us? Now think about that. The shadow of the Old Testament could be very seriously and clearly a group of people who were presumptuous enough to think they were the elite, they were the special ones.
They had privilege and they became demanding. And maybe that’s exactly why in the story when Jesus came with a new evolutionary stage of human beings moving from simple justice to mercy, unmerited love, they were too hard hearted, they were too fixed on. God is there for me to take care of my needs. Now think about that. That’s very much the way. Sometimes we get caught up in our relationship with God when things go wrong.
We say, where are you? What did I do wrong? Why are you punishing me? And we test him. I remember a young man coming to me early in my ministry and he was very proud to say at an 18 year old that he rejected God. He was an atheist.
And I said, really, why? And he said, well, my friend was in an accident and I prayed to God that he would live and he didn’t. So as far as I’m concerned, he isn’t that powerful. I’m not interested in him. He isn’t taking care of my needs when I want them. So you take that image of a kind of privileged place and then you look at a group of people in the gospel that are fascinating.
They’re Samaritans, they’re not connected to the temple, which was corrupt to its core. And the men that ran it were certainly filled with the idea of privilege. They love seats of honor, being nodded to in the marketplace, being called rabbi. And they had turned their religion into a kind of privileged place where God was going to give them everything they needed. It’s part of the kind of what you call prosperity gospel. If you do what God wants, he gives you everything you need.
But there’s something very different in the message of Jesus. Because the message of Jesus, as it’s revealed to the Samaritan, goes something like this. He comes to this place where there’s a well, belonged to Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham. So he’s one of the great patriarchs. And there’s a conversation, and the conversation reveals something about this Samaritan woman that was true of all the Samaritans. And somehow they felt, in a sense, they were outcasts, or at least they had a keen sense of being an outcast and not deserving, in a sense, everything to be the way they want it to be when it comes to God’s work in their life.
And there’s not a clear way that I can figure out how they became that way, other than they were considered outcasts by the church that they split from, the temple they split from. But whatever it was, you’ll notice that the good Samaritan was the only one that stopped to take care of the man that was, you know, robbed and beaten. And of all the 10 lepers, there was only one that came back to thank Jesus that was a Samaritan. And here we have this wonderful Samaritan woman who, when the message of Jesus is given, just takes it in and actually is just thrilled with it. And then she gathers some of her friends and they hear Jesus and they’re thrilled with this great new gift. And the gift is an amazing capacity on the part of Jesus to accept them exactly as they are and to say, I want to help you.
And ultimately, what Jesus is saying in his ministry is, I am not here in your life to give you everything you need. I’m here in your life to give you what everyone else needs from you. I’m giving you all that you need to take care of those that are broken and outcasts. So look at the woman and her history when Jesus comes upon her. First of all, she’s shocked that a rabbi would even bow down to come and talk to her. So she’s already feeling maybe like, whoa, this is really amazing.
I don’t really deserve this rabbi in his mind, but maybe this rabbi is different. Maybe he thinks I’m acceptable. And then the conversation goes on about living water. And what Jesus is trying to say is that they’re this gift that God wants to give to people. His presence, his life in them, giving them wisdom to know what they’re intended to be as they grow more closely to what God wants them to be is servants. And so what he’s saying to this woman to start with is there’s something that you long for that I want to give you.
It’s like water. But you have to come here to this well all the time to get the water. But I want to give something to you that is like quenching a thirst in you. And it’s not about this kind of water. It’s something radically different. So right away, God is making a promise to someone who doesn’t deserve this conversation.
And then he gets to more the center of what it is he’s trying to say when he says to her, this water that I give you is something again, very special. So she says, what is it? What is it? How does this work? Notice what he does is his answer. He doesn’t say, well, it’s about forgiveness, and it’s about living water being mercy inside of you.
Da, da, da. No, he just says, I know who you are, and I know who you are, and I still want you to have this water. I want you to feel this gift coming to you from God. And so he says, where’s your husband? Which seems like, why would he ask, where is your husband? When he’s describing what this water is like?
It’s because she doesn’t have a husband. She says, but why doesn’t she have a husband? Well, first, the husband she has is not really her husband. She’s living with somebody that’s against the law, and five men have divorced her. Think of it. She’s been rejected by five men.
Women had no right to divorce a man, but man could divorce a woman. So she’s been rejected by the temple in Jerusalem. She’s been rejected by five husbands. And here is Jesus saying, none of that is anything that I’m worried about. I’m not worried that she broke the law, but my heart goes out to you because you feel rejected. And what is it that we feel God will reject us for?
It is simply the simple fact that he is disappointed that we do something wrong and we’re not good enough. And so we tend to lose his favor. Or worse, we judge him as not really the God that we want him to be, and we reject him. But in either case, sin can be that which rejects and separates us from each other. And what God is giving to this woman, which he is telling all of us he’s giving to all of us, is a spirit inside of us. And when that spirit dwells in your heart, God in your heart, he awakens in you something beautiful, an amazing capacity for empathy and compassion.
That’s what the Samaritans had. And they had it because they knew they had been rejected. So there’s something connected in these two. Don’t feel that you have this relationship with God because you’re whatever religion you are in, it it cleanses you of all your faults and you know, if you’re in perfect relationship with God, so everything is great. I don’t have to do much other than to follow the rules and laws. No, you have to grow a heart filled with spirit life giving water that the woman actually and the people that listened to him realized this message.
This water saves the world. It’s the first time in scripture, only time in scripture that Jesus is called the Savior of the world. Amen. Satan. Father, we give you thanks for this beautiful gift of water, living water, forgiveness, mercy. Open our hearts to be filled with your spirit that as we pray to you, as we worship you, we’re worshiping in the truth of asking you not to take care of our needs, but to be instruments of the needs of others.
And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. The music in our program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for this show. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher, a listener supported program is archived and available on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com and available anytime, anywhere and for free on our podcast Finding God in Our Hearts. You can search and subscribe to Finding God in Our Hearts anywhere you download your podcasts. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you.
You can make a one time or recurring tax deductible donation on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com we thank you for your listenership and your continued support. Without it, this program would not be possible. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is a production of the Page Pastoral Reflections Institute, a NonProfit in Dallas, Texas dedicated to enriching your spiritual journey. Executive Producer Monsignor Don Fisher produced by Kyle Cross and recorded in Pastoral Reflections Institute Studios. Copyright 2024.
