THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
March 12, 2023 – Holy Spirit Parish
Ex 17:3-7
Rom 5:1-2, 5-8
Jn 4:5-42
Praised be Jesus Christ!
From
the Book of Exodus today we have an account of a major crisis in Israel’s camp in
the desert of Sinai provoked by a water shortage.
“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? …Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?’”
Throughout
the Exodus account there are references to Israel bemoaning their misery in the
desert (for lack of food and water above all, but basically just for being stuck
in the middle of nowhere living under tents, with leaders like stuttering Moses
and his brother Aaron, guides not of their own choosing). It should come as no
surprise their crying out about their regret at ever having left their place of
slavery in Egypt. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”
In
popular parlance from the more recent past one finds references to Catholics longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. This expression (longing
for the fleshpots of Egypt) refers to anyone’s longing to return to the slavery
of sin, choosing it over the freedom of the children of God. Faithfulness to
God comes at a cost. Life under the Exodus cloud in the desert away from the
land of slavery and for us today living as faithful Catholics implies making sacrifices;
it requires self-denial and most likely even suffering. “Why did you ever
make us leave Egypt?”
Israel’s
crisis, their longing for the creature comforts of Egypt despite the indignity
of slavery, has a corollary in the lives of a lot of Catholic people even yet
today. People will tell you they consider themselves abandoned by God in their
misfortune and question overall the benefits of religion. What good has it done
for them they ask, to turn away from sin and to be faithful to God, faithful to
the Church, when there’s no apparent gain in it for them at least not this side
of death? More often than not faithfulness to Christ, renouncing sin, means depriving
ourselves of all sorts of earthly goods with seemingly no immediate return.
One of the most
common temptations or faults is to envy the rich, to bemoan our fate. But the
so-called prosperity Gospel (that God materially favors His own) is not Catholic
teaching; it is not even New Testament. This appears in glaring fashion in Jesus’
Gospel parable about the beggar Lazarus ignored and abandoned at the gate of
the rich man’s house. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has Abraham responding to the
rich man in hell. “He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and
send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am
in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your
lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things;
but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between
you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass
from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’” [Luke 16:24-26. NRSV, Catholic
Edition Bible (p. 2850). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.]
As
the saying goes, Heaven comes to those who wait. More to the point would be
that our charity and personal sacrifices should be animated by a longing for
the world to come. You cannot avoid choosing. In real life there is no form to
fill out for life choices with a check box “undecided”. My heart, if it is not
set on Christ’s Kingdom, is set on damnation. “Why did you ever make us
leave Egypt?”
There is more to
it than the ultimate question of Heaven or Hell. There are daily choices big
and small to be made. We choose Christ in the community of the Church; we have
to join His people wandering about in the desert. No matter how clever, how
smart, how noble we might be, we cannot blaze our own path to God and eternal
happiness.
Not far from rejecting
old habits of sin and in that sense refusing the indignity of a life of slavery,
I am going to go out on a limb to state that the conflict between Moses and the
people in the desert at Massah and Meribah reminds me of the push back which
some very good priests get from their people when the priest dares to preach
the fullness of Catholic truth. Adherence to Christ is an all or nothing
proposition. Our temptation is to pick and choose from the list of duties
placed on us by the Church under pain of sin, such as when Father insists on
our obligation to get to Mass not only on Sundays but also on the six Holy Days
of Obligation in the US Church calendar. This issue has more frequently to do
with Catholic moral teaching. To be clear, to reject traditional Church
teaching is not so much balking at old-time religion but rather a rejection of the
newness of the Gospel. They refuse to live out the Gospel’s demands in the midst
of contemporary society which is hard to distinguish from the paganism and
superstition of old Greece and old Rome. “Why did you ever make us leave
Egypt?”
Through
the figure of water provided by God, this reading from Exodus is linked with
our Gospel from St. John about living water. Jesus said
to the Samaritan woman at the well: “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 only miracle
Jesus worked at the well in Samaria was to tell the woman everything she had
ever done. He did not give them a new and inexhaustible source of water to
replace Jacob’s Well. The Lord called her and those who listened to Him because
of her witness to come to faith in Him the source of living water. “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.”
St. Paul’s
Letter to the Romans gives us the bottom line of our boast of our boundless joy
arising from Christ’s sacrifice, in the Lord’s saving death upon the Cross out
of love for the sake of our salvation. The Lord invites us to choose the road
less traveled which passes by way of Calvary. In your Lenten prayer and
reflection this week, ask the Lord to enlighten you and help you to step up to the
challenge of the trek through the privations of the desert with God’s People by
way of an intimate share in His Cross unto glory.
Praised
be Jesus Christ! Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled! O Sorrowful Mother, take us
to your Son! Really!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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