HOMILY FOR 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT: YEAR A
HOMILY FOR 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT: YEAR A
HOMILY THEME: If you knew the gift of God, if you knew the one who is speaking to you…
BY: Fr. Mike Olumba
Exodus 17:3-7, Romans 5:1-2.5-8, John 4:5-42
It is noon at Jacob’s well. Tired from travelling, Jesus is resting. He was hungry and thirsty. A Samaritan woman comes to the well at this hour of the scorching sun, no doubt so as not to meet anyone else on account of her bad reputation! But the Word of God engages her in a game of questions and answers, gradually leading to the blessed question: A very long Gospel passage that speaks vividly to us about our attitudes toward people who are different from us or from our group. For Jesus, it doesn’t matter: He is a Jew, and Jews do not associate normally with Samaritans because of an old history of schism and pagan defilement. (Moreso, with this woman who is publicly recognised as a sinner, the disciples were surprised to see Jesus speaking with a woman at their return). She herself questions him and also wonders about Jesus’ identity. …Is he a prophet? the Messiah, perhaps? Thirsty for living water, the Samaritan woman runs to the village to announce the good news of the mystery of Jesus, this Jew who dared to ask for water from a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that. During their conversation, Jesus says to her, “If you knew the gift of God, if you knew the one who is speaking to you…”
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Some of us may have already had this experience: meeting someone without knowing who they were, where they came from, or where they were going. On their way to Emmaus, Jesus’ disciples in Luke’s Gospel had this experience three days after his death. After seeing him share the Eucharistic bread with them, they suddenly realized who their travelling companion was. They returned to Jerusalem, saying to themselves, “If only we had known who was talking to us on the road…”
Sometime we may have something precious but don’t pay enough attention to it. For example, once a couple preparing their wedding booklet rejected the readings from the Bible because, for them, there was nothing interesting in the Bible; it only spoke of death, suffering, divine love perhaps, but nothing on human love. But in the end, they accepted a passage suggested by the priest in which a man and his beloved expressed their feelings of love and desire for each other. At first, they didn’t know that it was taken from the Bible, specifically from the Song of Songs. Again, if only we know what we have…
And as for the sacraments, sometimes the reception of the Sacrament of Confession/Forgiveness and everything that goes with it does not go down very well with some people because it involves “being spiritually naked” in front of someone else who speaks and grants pardon in the name of God. But then, in order to procure physical healing, we accept to be naked in front of a doctor. We also accept the services of psychologists as one to whom we can pour out our souls and get rid of our mental and psychological burdens, but without in any case receiving forgiveness for our sins while the feeling of guilt remains very strong. If only we knew what we have…
And the liturgical seasons, especially Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time; during each season, the Church highlights for our enjoyment the different phases and pages of the mysteries and the history of our salvation. What a beautiful plot of salvation from a wonderful God! Once again, if only we knew what we have…
Years ago, one day while on Apostolic Work, I went to visit a family during my village round. The man and his wife and children were there. Once we came in, the young wife greeted us and with eyes filled suddenly with tears, she left the parlour and went into her room with her three children. She never came back until we left. We talked with the husband and then left. I then asked the woman who was taking me round the village, why did the young mother react the way she did at our arrival. She sighed. “That was one of the dedicated leaders of our Mary League Girls about five years ago. The husband then promised to allow her continue to practice her Catholic faith after marriage. They even wedded in the Catholic Church. But after giving birth to two children, the husband reneged on his promised. He clearly told her and thus forced her to change over to his own church, or that she returns to her parents (then) without her children. That was how the girl lost her Catholic faith and has remained sad since then”. Again, if we only knew what we have…
In terms of our political dreams, dreams of a life without war, dreams of a life of peace and harmony among men, dreams of harmony between peoples, between man and nature: No society has ever dreamt as far as the Word of God, who went so far as to tell us that, in the world to come, “the lion and the lamb shall feed together, and a little child shall lead them” (cf. Isaiah 11:6-9): If only we knew the one who speaks to us! But shall we ever reach a point where we say to ourselves, “It is no longer because of what we have been told, what we have been taught, but because we now believe; we have understood it for ourselves, and we know that He is truly the Lord of the world”?
As we celebrate Lent in this period, the Church offers us paths to God especially the path of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These paths invite us to review and re-evaluate our values, desires, and pleasures.
Obviously, this does not mean we should give up all pleasures, but we can still put them into perspective, given that what we spend for example, on the pleasure of smoking a pack of cigarettes could feed an entire family somewhere for a whole day. “I used to complain about not having shoes until one day I saw a man who had no feet. My lack of shoes immediately paled in comparison to his lack of feet. Then I understood the blessing that God had given me.”
Once again, if only we know what we have in being followers of Christ…
May God bless us–AMEN!
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