The readings we will hear in select masses over the next three Sundays are called the scrutiny readings and are part of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. They are meant in a special way for those who will be joining the family of God this Easter. The themes for the three scrutiny gospel readings are conversion, healing, and the promise of eternal life.
Today in our gospel reading we read about the Samaritan woman. Quickly we may recognize ourselves in this woman. Like her we go about our lives as if nothing is up, everything is fine, we stay busy with the normal things of life. Yet something is amiss since sin has condemned us to being less than fully alive. Sin, big and small, can bring us low and limit us to a life that never quite takes off, because the chains of sin can be so very heavy. We were designed to soar like an eagle, but sin has made us crawl on the ground. The Samaritan woman would have to go to the well at noon – the hottest part of the day, so no one would see her. She was embarrassed, felt awkward, felt the weight of sin, perhaps even unacknowledged sin, and so had separated herself from her own community. Persistent sin requires us to make accommodations for it – to live differently than we would otherwise do. Like the Samaritan woman we may ostracize ourselves or go out in the noonday sun unable to even consider the possibility that we can soar.
But God wants us to soar and to be perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt 5:48). To confess our sin and to seek forgiveness in confession is but a step in the right direction but it does not end there. God’s desire is for us to be a new man or a new woman, not only free of sin, but healed, whole, complete and transformed; brokenness repaired, tears of sadness - now tears of joy, isolation - now full communion. Our heart ache is remade into something powerful and positive. “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.” What is this water if not the Holy Spirit – the source of spiritual life and of the transformation of the believer. We are to drink deeply from this well and to allow the Spirit to do his work in us. We give the Holy Spirit access to the deepest recesses of our souls, so forgiveness can be accompanied by healing. This is the perfection God is looking for - our perfection, our wholeness, our completeness, with the wounds of life healed over. But we have to let the Spirit in, to let Christ in.
Pope Saint John Paul II said we are all like that rich young man who followed all God’s commandments but was sad because he was told to sell what he had and to give the money to the poor. Like the rich young man, we are a little afraid to go “all-in” with Jesus. A little afraid to give him everything. To fully trust him.
Jesus knows us completely and does not turn away but rather meets us in the heat of the noonday sun. He offers to us water that itself then becomes a spring, that wells up into eternal life. By means of this water we are forgiven, we are healed, we are transformed, we are born anew. The heavy chains of sin are broken and the path to perfection, wholeness, completeness, opens before us. Like the Samaritan woman, we now run joyfully into Town and acclaim that truly He is our savior, and the savior of the world. So, we turn to him, or return to him, and then, as Pope Saint John Paul II, gently encourages us, we go, “all-in”.
Deacon Peter Bujwid
St. Agnes Church, Arlington, Massachusetts
Sunday 23rd March 2025
