Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2, 5-8; Jn 4:5-42
Where you focus your heart will follow. This week I had the blessing and honor of baptizing two children and in the celebration after there were some newborn infants among the extended family. The joy of being able to hold an infant was seen in the gazing eyes upon each child, both in a tangible sense of growing love in the eyes and warmth in the arms as each person took turns carrying a child. At the moment a focused heart on that child was all that was important.
Lent is that invitation to have a focused heart for “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” and it does not disappoint. Jesus is focused on our salvation waiting our response. This Lenten journey is an invitation to refocus from distractions and temptations through a discipline of abstinence, fasting, and “other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety” (Canon 1253). Focus on the face of God on the cross for our sins, on the face of God in the poor, homeless, orphan, widow and the greater sense of suffering in the world with love that leads to acts of charity.
Focus on the deeper sense of sinfulness in the silence of our hearts revealed through scripture study, in prayer, and in communion. In the Lenten discipline we can enter into the Exodus experience of the people who hunger and thirst and are tempted in weakness to harden their hearts away from God. Our awareness of suffering is a challenge of faith but also an opportunity to turn to God in repentance, humility, and trust in God’s mercy. Do you believe?
In contrast the Samaritan woman living in sin had faith to believe. The encounter is with a stranger, a Jew who does not follow the cultural norms of avoiding a Samaritan but engages her. Jesus’ thirst for water is both an act of humanity and divinity as he prepares her heart for living water after confessing her sinful lifestyle. Jesus arouses her faith as she responds, “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” How often we encounter someone of a different faith but share a belief in one God. Is not our search for the same living water and our encounter an opportunity to draw water from the well of faith in the other? In dialogue a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim is an encounter with “a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. The faith of our ancestors meets at the mountain of God to do the will of the Father.
Our mountain is the altar of sacrifice in the Eucharist where we offer our sacrifice of worship and thanksgiving in spirit and truth to “acclaim the rock of our salvation”. With joyful praise our hope and focus is to turn to the one who says, “I have called you friends” (John 15:15) and invite him to stay with us. St. Thomas calls friendship a virtue which is an excellence of attention to love of God and love of neighbor.
In the celebration event following the baptisms there was plenty of deserts to eat. One young man asked his mother if it was ok to cheat a little and have some desert. Apparently he had given up sweats for Lent. The mother responded, “that’s between you and God.” His focus shifted to a conversation and he passed on the temptation. Let us keep our focus on him in trials and temptation and listen to the voice in our hearts where the spirit dwells ready to well up our souls with spiritual food for eternity.
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