Catholic Caucus: Sunday Mass Readings, 02-27-05

February 27, 2005
Third Sunday of Lent

Psalm: Sunday 12

Reading I
Ex 17:3-7

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 will be standing there in front of you on the rock in 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?"

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

R. (8) 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.
R. 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.
R. 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,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works."
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Reading II
Rom 5:1-2, 5-8

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 this 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 appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps 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.

Gospel
Jn 4:5-42 or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,
near the plot of land that Jacob had given to 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 of 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 in 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 worshiped 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 have 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 have 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."

or

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,
near the plot of land that Jacob had given to 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 of 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 in 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.

"I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped 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 who is speaking with you."

Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him.
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."

Homily of the Day

Homily of the Day

Title:	What Is That Thirst Telling You?
Author:	Monsignor Dennis Clark, Ph.D.
Date:	Sunday, February 27, 2005

John 4:5-42

A couple of strangers were visiting a dusty little town in the back country of west Texas. It was hard-shell Baptist country: No drinkin' and no dancin'! But these two were strangers, so they asked a cowboy where they might get a drink.

"In this town," said the cowboy, "they use whiskey only for snakebite." Then he added slyly, "There's only one snake in town. So you better get in line before it gets worn out!"

Some thirst — to hug a snake!

The woman at the well had a mighty thirst, a thirst so big it led her through five husbands and who knows what else. And still she was thirsty — though she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was she was longing for.

Jesus could see her sadness, so He helped her see what that dry, parched, empty feeling inside her was really about: She was thirsting for love that would last, love that would fill her full and give purpose to her life.

Nothing less would do.

By His kindness to her, as well as by His words, Jesus showed her where that kind of love is to be found. He showed her, and her heart caught fire.

We all have a mighty thirst, like the woman at the well, a thirst for a love so big that it can give purpose, and shape, and meaning to the whole of our lives. We've looked for that love in all sorts of places, often in dead-end streets. At times we've caught a glimpse of it and then got distracted and let it slip away.

But God is infinitely patient with us, and this restless thirst we feel — at times so painfully — is His gift, calling out to us, calling and calling, protecting us from settling for anything less than Himself at the center of our lives.

For He alone is big enough to fill us full. He alone can give purpose to our lives. He alone can bring us living water — joy that lasts forever. He alone! He alone!

Listen to His call inside you. Hear it, and say "Yes!"

A Voice in the Desert

February 27, 2005 Third Sunday of Lent

Reading I (Exodus 17:3-7) Reading II (Romans 5:1-2, 5-8)

Gospel (St. John 4:5-42)

In the first reading today, we hear about the people of Israel when they are out in the desert. They are standing in front of Mount Sinai and they have no water, and because they are thirsting and afraid that they might die in their thirst, they begin to grumble against God. The Lord not only provided the water for them (as, of course, He was going to anyway), but He speaks later on about what happened at Meribah and Massah. He tells us that the people tested Him, though they had seen all of His works. They had seen the plagues, they had seen the sea opened up and the people walk through and the Egyptians killed, they had seen the manna that they had received in the desert, and still they refused to trust in God. So some fifteen hundred years later from that, when King David wrote his psalms, the Holy Spirit inspired him to put into Psalm 95 this particular point, and that is that God says, At Meribah and Massah they tested me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works. So I swore in my anger, “They shall never enter into my rest.” The Church begins every single day by reciting that psalm. Every priest throughout the world, every religious, any layperson who prays the Breviary, that psalm is on their lips 365 days a year to remind us that we have to trust in God and that we are not to grumble against Him.

Yet if we look into our own hearts, how many times have we grumbled against God. When things do not go the way that we want them to, when something happens that is unpleasant for us, rather than accepting it, or rather being like the saints and rejoicing in it, we grumble, we complain, we get angry with the Lord. Yet we know that these people out in the desert, when they grumbled against God, were punished. They were punished by not entering into the Promised Land and not entering into the rest, the Sabbath rest of eternity, that God has prepared for those who love Him.

Now when we look again at our own selves, we live in such a cushy society that the slightest little problem gets us grumbling against God. I think that we need to be pretty clear with what is going on. The time is upon us when things are going to get very bad externally. We have begun to see some of the things, and they have only just begun. We need to do exactly what Saint Paul reminds us in the second reading, to put into practice our faith – which is purely a gift from God – and faith is going to find its expression, as he tells us, in hope and in charity. We have our hope in Jesus Christ and in the promises that Our Lord has made us. It is there that we need to look because if we look at the world around us, or if we focus on ourselves, we are going to go down and we are going to complain against God.

If we look at the circumstances that we have seen recently, for instance, the tsunami over in Asia, the pagans in the media have tried to use that to undermine people’s faith. “If there is a God,” they said, “how would He possibly allow something like this to happen? Two hundred thousand people dead! Obviously, God must not be a merciful God. There can’t be a God.” Well, to the pagan media, I say simply, “Hang on, because you haven’t seen anything yet!” Things are going to get very bad. If you just think about what is going on, if you want to look at the mercy of God for a moment, ask yourself how many babies we have to kill before God’s mercy is filled. Four thousand a day in America, and we are far from the worst. In Russia right now, the average woman has had between 8 and 10 abortions – the average! One of the priests from Russia was sitting at our dining room table. He told us about a woman who came in who had had 42 abortions, and then she was angry at God because she could not get pregnant! In the Low Countries, 50% of all the babies are aborted. So how many billions of babies have we killed around the world? In China, they are forcing abortions because they allow only one child. In India, now they have begun to do the same. And then we sit back and try to suggest that God is not merciful.

The justice of God is upon us. His mercy has been extended and extended and extended even further. Now it is time for the justice of God, which is the same as His mercy, because this world needs to be purified. In Scripture, one of the sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance is the shedding of innocent blood, and one cannot get any more innocent than a baby. The pagans in the media who want to scream about 200,000 people dying in the lands where they have child prostitution and child pornography beyond any other in the world do not bat an eyelash when it comes to killing babies. We need to recognize the reality of what is happening and then we need to look at what we have to do.

In the Gospel reading today, the Samaritan woman recognizes Who Jesus is, and He acknowledges directly that He is the Messiah. The people of this Samaritan town understand Who He is, and they say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your testimony, we have heard for ourselves.” The Holy Spirit, Saint Paul said, has been poured forth into our hearts. That is the spring of living water that Jesus speaks of, the grace of God given to each one of us. So we have faith, we have hope, we have charity placed within us. The question is, are we practicing it? Can we say with those Samaritans that we know Who Jesus is? I think we will all say it, but what do we do about it? Do we put our faith into practice? With the things that are coming upon this world, and coming very soon, the only way we are going to make it is to put that faith into practice. Otherwise, what is going to happen is that if we take our eyes off of Jesus we will grumble against God and we will be lost.

What matters – and all that matters – is that we remain in the state of grace, that our hearts, which are harder than the rock at Horeb that Moses struck to get water out of, the hardness of our stony hearts has to break. We have become so immune to the evil around us that we just shrug our shoulders and we do not even care. It is more important to us that we have comfort, that we have entertainment, that Satan’s box in the living room continues to fill our heads with garbage. That is what seems more important to us in America, and even to Catholics in America. That is far more important to us for some odd reason than the Lord Himself. I have told you before and I will tell you again: There is only one way that we are going to survive, not even survive physically, but survive spiritually. It does not matter if you live or die; all that matters is that you are in the state of grace so you can go to heaven.

There is only one way that this is going to happen, and that is if we are deep in prayer – deep in prayer. Not one single person, from the Holy Father in Rome to the newborn baby, will be able to do this on their own. None of us has the strength to be able to survive what is coming. Only by the grace of God will a few survive to begin things all over, to see the new springtime that our Holy Father keeps talking about. Our Lady told us at Akita, which is the last fully approved apparition, approved even by the Vatican, that fire will fall from the sky killing the greater part of humanity and every single person in the state of mortal sin will die and many in the state of grace will die. It will be indiscriminate; priests and the people, it does not matter. What matters is that you are in the state of grace. That will be the culminating point, but there is much that is going to happen before that.

If we are not going to grumble against God like the people in Israel, then we had better have our focus on God that the faith that we profess in Jesus Christ, the hope that we proclaim in the promises of Christ for eternal life, and the charity of God, the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us so that it will well up to eternal life, need to be put into practice. Again, I tell you: If you are not spending time in prayer, you will not make it. I do not know how I can be more clear. Jesus is right here in the Blessed Sacrament 24 hours a day, and Catholics run the other direction. We watch Satan’s box instead of the Lord’s box. “The tabernacle,” as Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “is my TV set. It is that box that I like to sit and watch.” What about us? To whom do we listen? To the voice of the devil filling our heads with his lies? or to the voice of God? The choice is ours. The Holy Spirit has been given to each and every one of us, poured forth into our hearts; all we have to do is listen to Him, to follow Him. There are two spirits: the Holy Spirit and the unholy spirit. The choice is very clear. One likes to make everything sound fun and lead us to condemnation for eternity. The other leads us to the Cross and eternal life. The choice is ours.

* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

The Word Among Us

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Meditation
John 4:5-42

Jesus was weary and thirsty when he stopped at Jacob’s well in the middle of the Judean desert. He had nothing to draw up the water, so he waited for someone to come. The first person who showed up was a Samaritan woman whose loose lifestyle caused her to be shunned by her neighbors. Seeing this woman, Jesus did the unthinkable. He offered her “living water” that had the power to cleanse her and make her whole. Somehow, Jesus gave her such an incredible thirst for God that she couldn’t refuse. No one had talked to her like that before.

What is this life-changing water? St. Hippolytus explains: “This is the water of the Spirit. . . . It is the water of Christ’s baptism; it is our life. If you go with faith to this renewing fountain . . . you cease to be a slave and become an adopted son; you come forth radiant as the sun and brilliant with justice; you come forth a son of God and fellow-heir with Christ” (On the Epiphany).

The beauty of this water of life is that it is constantly flowing. From the moment we were baptized into it, that water is available to us every day. And it’s a good thing, too! As challenging as it is to live in this world—as much as sin and temptation threaten to make us feel parched, it’s comforting to know that we can be refreshed every time we turn to the Lord.

The amazing thing about drinking Jesus’ water of life is that even as he quenches our thirst, he also mysteriously increases our thirst. It’s like drinking a fine wine. One sip so ignites your senses that you want to take another. Jesus’ love is so satisfying that we want to drink it in as much as we can. It’s as if we can never get enough of it. May we never stop drinking from the fountain of living water! For there alone is where we will find the healing and refreshment we so desire!

“Thank you, Lord, for your invigorating water of life! At Mass today I want to drink deeply in faith and surrender.”

One Bread, One Body

<< Sunday, February 27, 2005 >>

Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 17:3-7
Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Psalm 95
John 4:5-42

View Readings

JESUS’ MERCY FOR THE DESPISED

“God proves His love for us.” —Romans 5:8

The Samaritan woman came to Jacob’s well at about noon after all the other villagers had come to use the well (see Jn 4:6). She was probably trying to avoid meeting people who despised her. She may have even despised herself and wanted in her self-hatred not to be seen in public.

However, Jesus was already at the well — waiting all by Himself to give amazing revelations to this most unlikely candidate. He spoke to her of God’s gift of living water (Jn 4:10), becoming in her “a fountain...leaping up to provide eternal life” (Jn 4:14). After beginning to reveal to her the Holy Spirit and Baptism, Jesus told her that He is the Messiah (Jn 4:26). The Samaritan woman then became an effective missionary, as she led many of her fellow villagers to faith in Jesus (Jn 4:39). Jesus, in His mercy, chose this despised woman to receive some of the greatest revelations ever given. Jesus made her His witness and graced her missionary work with power. God “chose the world’s lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing” (1 Cor 1:28).

If your life is such that hardly anyone respects you, if you have ruined your life, you can still have “a future full of hope” (Jer 29:11), for Jesus is “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4). Lord Jesus, have mercy on us.

Prayer: Father, during this Lent may I enter as never before into the depths of Jesus’ heart of mercy.

Promise: “They told the woman: ‘No longer does our faith depend on your story. We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this really is the Savior of the world.’ ” —Jn 4:42

Praise: Praise Jesus the all-merciful Son of the Father. Praise Jesus, Mercy incarnate.

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