The saving power of God. Third Sunday of Lent (A)This Sunday Pope Francis prayed the Angelus with the people gathered in St. Peter's Square. He also gave a brief meditation on the Gospel passage read on this Third Sunday of the year. Lentabout Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well.
The Pope explains that the fact that Jesus, thirsty and tired, stops to rest and asks a woman for a drink, shows us "an image of God's abasement: in Jesus, God became one of us; thirsty like us". This thirst of Christ, says Francis, "is not only physical, it expresses the deepest dryness of our life: it is above all the thirst for our love".
But the Lord, the one who asks to drink, is also the one who gives to drink. "Jesus, thirsting for love, quenches our thirst with love. And he does with us as he did with the Samaritan woman: he comes close to us in our daily lives, he shares our thirst, he promises us the living water that makes eternal life spring up in us".
A much deeper thirst
This phrase of Jesus is much more profound, says the Pope. "These words are not only Jesus' request to the Samaritan woman, but an appeal - sometimes silent - that every day rises up to us and asks us to take on the thirst of others."
"Give me to drink is the appeal of our society, where haste, the race for consumption and indifference generate aridity and inner emptiness."
In this way, Francis points out, "the Gospel today offers each of us the living water that can make us become a source of refreshment for others". And, furthermore, this passage invites us to ask ourselves: "Do I thirst for God, do I realize that I need his love like water to drink? And then: do I care about the thirst of others?"
