March 4, 2024
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent (Year A) on March 3, 2024 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. (Even though we are in Year B, we have elected to use the Year A readings for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sundays of Lent this year.) The homily is based on the Year A readings: Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; and John 4:5-42.
Over the next three weekends, we’re celebrating a set of ancient Church rites called “the Scrutinies” with someone who is preparing to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. For every Mass on these weekends, we’ll use the readings and prayers prescribed for the Scrutinies. The gospel passages are fantastic stories about people growing in relationship with Jesus.
Today, we’ll hear the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus’ conversation with her is remarkable in at least three ways:
- Samaritans and Jews were sworn enemies of each other.
- Even today in parts of the Middle East, a man does not speak to an unknown woman without a chaperone.
- This woman goes to the well in the heat of the day, instead of the cool of the morning when everyone else in the village gathers there.
The fact that the woman is an outcast doesn’t stop Jesus from befriending her. God invites each of us into a lifelong relationship. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge our need for God’s mercy.
While many of us gathered here today have been coming to the Paulist Center for years, or even for decades, there is almost always someone else at every weekend Mass who is visiting us for the first time. This is not the case in most churches in the United States. Why do newcomers keep coming to the Paulist Center Community? I’m definitely biased, but I think one element is the spirituality of the Paulist Fathers, the priests who serve here.
What is Paulist spirituality? Sometimes I explain it this way: you and I are here to serve the people outside the church walls. We do this in four ways:
- You and I are called to be evangelizers. We witness to the gospel in a way that encourages other people to become disciples.
- You and I are called to be reconcilers. We bring peace to those who feel hurt by or alienated from the Church.
- You and I are called to be ecumenists. We seek unity with all other Christians.
- You and I are called to be interreligious dialogue partners. We build bonds with people of non-Christian faiths.
No Catholic community besides the Paulists combines evangelization, reconciliation, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue into one single mission. Some people argue that these goals are at odds with one another. But today’s gospel makes it clear that there are ways to pursue all these goals at once. Jesus witnesses to the truth of the Jewish faith to a Samaritan woman. He also acknowledges the beliefs that they hold in common. He befriends this outcast woman without glossing over the pain in her story. Jesus likely recognizes that women were second-class citizens under the Mosaic Law, so this woman had likely been rejected by a series of husbands, and perhaps the last one spurned her but refused to grant her a divorce. In other words, Jesus meets the woman where she is and as she is.
No matter whether we’re newcomers or we’re old timers at the Paulist Center, whether we’ve never studied the faith or we have a theology degree, whether we’re extraverts or we’re introverts, we all have the skills to be evangelizers, reconcilers, ecumenists, and interreligious dialogue partners.
One of the best evangelizers I ever met was a colleague of mine in Tennessee, Dr. Ruth Queen Smith. She insisted that all we need to do to evangelize is to tell our personal story. No matter how incompetent we may feel in speaking about theology, all of us are undoubtably the experts about our journey of faith. As Ruth insisted, when you tell your story, nobody is going to say that you got it wrong!
It takes vulnerability to tell our personal stories. In my homilies, I’m often tempted to stick to generalizations, but most people tell me that they find my preaching to be the most relevant when I share how the gospel is relevant to me.
So, here’s my advice on how we can be effective evangelizers, reconcilers, ecumenists, and interreligious dialogue partners. It’s very simple: treat people as Jesus treated the woman at the well. In other words:
- Jesus did not condemn the woman. Let’s treat people with respect.
- Jesus listened to the woman explain what she believed. Let’s listen, rather than tell people what we think they believe.
- Jesus didn’t pressure the woman. Let’s witness to the potential each person has.
Jesus met the woman where she was and as she was. He did not demand that she needed to be transfigured before she would be worthy of his attention.
And what did Jesus’ attention to this woman do? Surprise, surprise: she becomes the first evangelizer in the Gospel of John. She shares her story of faith with the very people in the village who have ostracized her. They in turn come to believe, first because of her story, but then because of their own experiences of Christ.
These next three weekends, we pray in a special way for the person in our midst who is preparing to be baptized. Now, it’s one thing for us to pray for an infant to be cleansed of original sin before we baptize them; it’s another to pray for adults who must face the ways that they have fallen short in their lives. As our elect continues her journey to a deeper relationship with Christ Jesus by scrutinizing her life, we scrutinize our own lives. Let us each take a moment to ask ourselves two questions:
- What is weak and sinful in us that needs to be healed through Christ?
- What is good and strong in us that needs to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit?
I was interviewed for a podcast this week. I was asked who in the world should be considered marginalized. The irony was not lost on me that I was being interviewed by three other white men. My recollection of how it went is that I invited everyone into a more nuanced conversation. Every one of us probably feels broken in one way or another, and many of us feel different from the people around us, if not outright outcast. Some of us have been victimized, as perhaps the woman at the well may have been. But Jesus continually invites each of us to the living waters of healing, of belonging, and of fully becoming the people God destines us to be.