Third Sunday in Lent

Invitation

May I draw your attention to the daily reading of the Gospel?

This invitation is intended to share with you the joy of the Gospel. Everyone, without exception, can experience that joy by opening their heart to the healing power of God’s word.

Available every day.

Opening words On our pilgrimage to Easter, we encounter Jesus again today. He is tired and resting by a well. He strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman whose heart He knows how to touch. It becomes the encounter of her life. She discovers Jesus as the source that quenches her deepest thirst: the thirst for true happiness and unconditional love. Jesus also wants to be a source of new life for us. He brings us together here to worship God in spirit and truth. Let us drink deeply of his words at this hour, so that our faith in Him may grow ever stronger. FIRST READING           Ex . 17, 3-7 Give us water to drink. From the Book of Exodus In those days, the Israelites suffered from intense thirst during their journey through the desert. They continued to grumble against Moses and said: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt if we are to die of thirst with our children and livestock?” Moses complained to the Lord: “What am I to do with this people? They are about to stone me.” The Lord replied to Moses: “Go before the people with some of Israel’s elders, take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and set out on your way. I will stand there before your eyes, on a rock at Horeb. Strike that rock, water will flow out so that the people may drink.” Moses did so in the presence of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massa and Meriba because of the reproaches of the Israelites and because they had challenged the Lord by asking, “Is the Lord with us or not?” Responsorial Psalm              Ps. 95(94), 1-2, 6-7, 8-9 Refrain Listen today to God’s voice: Do not be stubborn. Come, let us greet the Lord with jubilation, let us cheer the Rock of our salvation. Let us appear before Him with a song of praise, honour Him with songs. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before Him who made us. He is our God and we are His people, He is our Shepherd and we are His flock. Listen today to His voice: Do not be stubborn as once in Meribah, as in Massa in the desert, where your fathers wanted to defy Me even though they had seen My deeds. SECOND READING             Rom. 5, 1-2, 5-8 Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. From the letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Christians in Rome Brothers and sisters, Justified by faith, we live in peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is he who has given us access by faith to the grace in which we stand; through him we also boast in our hope of the glory of God. And that hope will not disappoint us, for God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For Christ died for the ungodly at the appointed time, when we ourselves were still completely helpless. One will not easily find anyone who would give his life for a righteous person, although perhaps someone might be able to do so in a particular case. But God proves his love for us precisely in this, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Verse before the Gospel        John 4, 42 and 15 Praise and glory be to You, Lord Jesus. Lord, You are truly the Saviour of the world. Give me the living water, so that I may never thirst again. Praise and honour be to You, Lord Jesus. GOSPEL                  John 4, 5-42 A spring of water welling up to eternal life. From the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John At that time, Jesus came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. There was Jacob’s well, and Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a woman from Samaria came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” The 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 do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, saying, “If you knew the gift of God, and if you knew who it is that says 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 have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it with his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again; on the contrary, the water I will give him will become a spring of water within him, bubbling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me that water, so that I will never thirst again and will not have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her: “Go and call your husband and then come back here.” “I have no husband,” replied the woman. Jesus said to her: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. In this you have spoken the truth.” “Sir,” said the woman, “I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on that mountain, and you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” “Believe Me, woman,” said Jesus to her, “the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on that mountain nor in Jerusalem. “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews. “But the hour is coming, indeed it is already here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. “For the Father seeks such worshippers. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that the Messiah — that is, the Anointed One — is coming, and when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Just then his disciples returned, and they were surprised that he was talking to a woman. None of them, however, asked, “What do you want from her?” or “Why are you talking to her?” The woman left her water jar, ran back to the city and said to the people, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I have done! “Could he be the Messiah?” Then they left the town to go to Him. Meanwhile, the disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat something.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought Him food?” Then Jesus said to them: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. “Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? “Well, I tell you: Lift up your eyes and look at the fields; they are white, ripe for harvest. “Already the reaper receives his wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. “So the saying is true: One sows, another reaps. “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have laboured, and you reap the fruits of their labour. Many Samaritans from the city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them. So he stayed there for two days, and because of his word, many more came to believe. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard him ourselves and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.” ________________________________________________________

Laudato Si

Encyclical of

POPE FRANCIS

On Care for Our Common Home

50. Instead of solving the problems of the poor and thinking about a different world, some people limit themselves to proposing a reduction in the birth rate. There is no lack of international pressure on developing countries to make economic aid conditional on a certain policy of “reproductive health”. But, “if it is true that the unequal distribution of the population and the available resources are obstacles to development and the sustainable use of the environment, it is also true that the unequal distribution of resources and the population is a serious obstacle to the development of the environment. But, “if it is true that the unequal distribution of the population and available resources are obstacles to development and the sustainable use of the environment, then it must be recognised that demographic growth is fully compatible with integral and solidarity-based development”. Demographic growth, and not the extreme and selective consumerism of a few, is a way of avoiding the problems. The aim is to legitimise the current distribution of goods, in which a minority thinks only of itself. It has the right to consume in a way that cannot possibly be generalised because the planet could not even contain the waste from such consumption. We also know that about a third of the food produced is wasted, and “food that is thrown away is like stealing from the table of the poor”. In any case, it is certain that attention must be paid to the unequal distribution of the population, both nationally and globally, because the increase in consumption is leading to a situation where the planet cannot cope with the waste from such consumption. In any case, it is certain that attention must be paid to the unequal distribution of the population, both nationally and globally, because the increase in consumption leads to complex regional problems due to a combination of issues related to environmental pollution, transport, waste disposal, loss of resources and quality of life. To be continued Every day at 1 am.