3rd Sunday of Lent A

For the last two weeks we have been trying to do what the Second Vatican Council, all those years ago, called us to do; read the signs of the times and understand what God is saying to the world through them. Our starting point was the book of Genesis and, in particular, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. We saw its link with the phenomenon of mass-atheism, itself the result of Christianity’s failure to respond adequately as the world moved from the Middle Ages, a period dominated by religious belief, into a new age dominated by science and reason. And my fundamental invitation has been to recognize that, in the words of Peter last week at the Transfiguration, ‘it’s good for us to be here.’ After thirty nine years as a priest, this is my deep conviction: that we are a profoundly blessed people, lucky to be living through such a wonderful time in the history of the Church, a time when we are engaged in a historic journey, a journey that is leading us from religion through the cleansing waters of doubt and atheism into the age of mysticism, the next and final stage in humanity’s journey towards God. And every day I see evidence of this, two examples from the last week being sufficient to illustrate the point.

The first was a very moving letter I received from one of you. Obviously I cannot go into detail about it but it was the latest confirmation for me that, far beyond the narrow limits of Church and religion, God is at work deep within the lives of people during this time of transition, calling them to himself. And the second was an encounter I had with a boy in the prison. I know him to say hello to, one of those youngsters we would be wary of if we met him in the street. But on Thursday he asked to speak to me, and when we went into his cell told me what had been happening to him. He hadn’t believed in God since he was a child, but, for some reason he couldn’t explain, had recently begun to pray. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said. ‘God is real, and he’s helping me. I feel so thankful and just wanted to speak to you so that I could put my thanks into words.’ All the time I tell people that gratitude is the infallible sign of God at work and as that boy told me his story my heart leapt with joy and I knew that it was not only good for me and him to be there but for all of us to be alive at this time when God is doing so many things like this.

And yet there’s been another feeling lying around throughout the last thirty eight years. And it’s a feeling of deep frustration summed up by Moses in the first reading when he cries out to God. ‘Lord, how am I to deal with this people? ‘A little more and they will stone me.’ I have no doubt God is doing great things in our time, but the other side of that is our deep resistance to it. Forty years after the Council we have hardly begun to implement it and there is still profound unwillingness in the Church – by which I mean all of us – to go where God is leading, something that was very obvious at a meeting I attended on Tuesday. It was the latest attempt by the diocese to work out the way forward in relation to the issue of a rapidly diminishing supply of priests. And while the overall mood of the meeting was very positive and optimistic, and people on the whole could see that, out of the present situation, God would bring something new, there was one problem that kept coming up; how to get people in parishes to let go of totally unrealistic expectations. I know of one priest, not in this diocese, who, having recently gone from having two parishes to having four and having, as a consequence, had to rearrange the Mass times in all four, was confronted in a supermarket by an angry parishioner whom he hadn’t seen at Mass for a while, with the words; ‘And do you know why you haven’t seen me? You changed the time of my Mass.’ I think, too, of a friend of mine in Madrid. He has recently taken over a parish which had been almost untouched by Vatican II and is being persecuted by certain parishioners just because he is implementing things the rest of the Catholic Church has been doing for years. And. of course, these relatively unimportant externals are nothing compared to the much more profound change in the way we think which is called for at this time if we are to equip ourselves to deal with the challenges of a world filled with people who are thirsting, not for the water we read about in the first reading, but for the living water Jesus speaks of in the Gospel: the Good News expressed in terms which are fit for the 21st century and so can help the men and women of our time survive in and ultimately make sense of the spiritual desert which is consumer-driven materialsim. And although I complain about the frustration involved in calling for this change, I know that it does not come easily. But, difficult as it is, and patient as we need to be, there’s one thing without which it can never happen; a fundamental willingness to engage with it. And that is what we see in the woman in today’s Gospel.

What’s very obvious about her in the story is that she was thirsty. And it’s obvious, too, from the way she responds to Jesus mention of living water, that she was thirsty for far more than the water that came from the village well. It’s clear from the story that all was not well in her life and, like so many today, she was searching for something deeper. And that was all Jesus needed. When he talked initially about buckets and living water, she hadn’t a clue what he was on about, just like many in the Church today faced with the call to conversion in our time. But that didn’t matter. Her thirst was all Jesus needed and he was able to lead her, stage by stage, to the point where she put down her water jar – a powerful symbol of the change that was taking place - and went back into the village to tell others that she had found the Messiah. Her thirst had led her to Jesus and Jesus had changed her life

So how thirsty are you for the living water Jesus speaks of?


BIDDING PRAYERS



In the first reading today, we find the people of Israel complaining. Having spent years longing to escape from the yoke of slavery, they are no sooner free than they begin to wish they were back in Egypt. But the promised land, both then and now, lies, not in the past, but in the future. And so we pray for the courage we need to keep moving forward, having nothing to do with the kind of nostalgia which deludes us into thinking that the past was better than it really was……………….….Lord hear us

“Is the Lord with us or not’ was the question facing the people of Israel as the reality of life beyond slavery began to bite. And today there are many in the Churches who, faced with what is going on in the world at this time, ask the same question. ‘Is the Lord with us or not?’ But God never abandons his people. It would be impossible for him to do so. And so we pray for a deep deep confidence in the providence of God guiding the world and the Church at this time…………………………....Lord hear us

Deep within human nature there is profound resistance to change. And yet change is inevitable. Without it we would still be living in the stone-age and a thousand things we enjoy and take for granted every day would not exist. And so, at this time of transition in the life of the Church, a ‘New Exodus’, or what Pope John XXIII called a ‘New Pentecost’, we pray for the courage we need to accept, not just the big ideas, but small, practical things like changes in Mass times…….Lord hear us

God is at work deep within the lives of people who don’t even believe in him. He has such dreams for every human being and so many things he longs to share with us all. But for this to happen he needs people who will be his instruments in the world, people who are able to offer it a vision fit for the time in which we live, a vision rooted in the Gospel. And so we pray for the grace to be such people...…Lord hear us

The journey from religion to faith, a journey we speak of so often, is about the spring of living water Jesus speaks of welling up inside us. When it happens, God becomes real and we begin to see him everywhere. Above all, like the young prisoner we heard about today, a deep sense of gratitude fills our hearts. It is the same journey made by the woman at the well and we pray that, like her, we will put down our water jars, our old religious habits, and enter the world of faith…………….Lord hear us

‘Oh that today you would listen to his voice, harden not your hearts.’ This was the response to today’s psalm and we invite God to reach into those parts of us that are hard, rigid and inflexible so that we become more open to the movement of his Spirit in us and, unlike the people in the first reading, listen to his voice………Lord hear us