Reflection for Third Sunday in Lent
Following our Lenten journey from last week, where Jesus is tempted to assuage his hunger by looking outside the “food” that God would provide, this week we come to a revelation of God’s way of assuaging our hunger and thirst. And it reveals God’s hunger for us. God says, “When I prove my holiness to you…I will give you a new spirit.”
This holiness is the desire to give us life to the full, and the choice to do so by offering his very self to us. Paul reminds us that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. God’s hunger for us transcends our own immediate needs as we come to recognize our “thirst” at a deeper level.
Our Gospel story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well addresses both our human hungers and thirsts, and our deeper need—for the gift of water that will become a spring welling up into eternal life. Jesus expresses his thirst and in return addresses her thirst, and ours as well.
His disciples return to wonder why He is with this woman and to offer him food. But “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me and to finish his work.”
The divine “hunger” for human salvation, as it is satisfied in Jesus’ gift of himself, leads him to tell his disciples that he has food that transcends even the need for earthly food.
As acute and overwhelming as our thirst for God might be, as exhausting and enervating as our journeys to God might seem, the yearning that God has for us and the journey that God has made into our hearts surpass it all infinitely. We continue our Lenten journey…
Len Kraus, S.J.
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