"God Refreshes Us" - 3rd Sunday of Lent Homily

Why do Catholics get so into Lent?

I can talk any of the time the rest of the year about fasting and people look at me like from another planet.

But then this 40 days like, Father, how am going to fast?

It's a phenomenon.

And it's part of it, I think, is what Jesus talks about.

We worship what we understand.

So we understand food and drink really well.

This is our wheelhouse.

And even to like give up a little something in those areas for God, like, yeah, cool, I'm on board with that.

It's good team effort.

But we see this show up in our history.

I've studied this, but the word we heard in the first reading grumbled.

We heard in our retreat yesterday, the speaker said that the Israelites complained all the time in the Old Testament.

Following God, following Moses.

But specifically, this word grumbled had to do with food and drink.

So they complained when there was no food or drink.

Grumbled.

Also the same word when Jesus teaches about food in John 6, the bread of life.

They grumbled.

This is a hard teaching.

So we know food and drink.

God knows this is our wheelhouse.

And He offers true worship using food and drink.

starting with water at baptism.

It was really cool this morning with Father Vincent away, I took the children's mass and asked the children in the homily, what kind of water is Jesus talking about?

They're like, holy water, living water.

Like, wow, okay, you were listening better than I was.

It's a different kind of water.

But that's where God starts with us, in baptism.

That's what our adults, our catechumens are preparing for at Easter, to receive the waters welling up to eternal life, that's referring to baptism.

and then centers our worship on bread, the bread of life, the Eucharist.

So God knows that we know food and drink, and we can get holy with earthly stuff and lent involving that to honor Him.

And we can also talk very honestly, even grumble about these things to Him if we don't have them.

So we worship, we understand,

We kind of should be understanding God a little bit more and talk about Him and His stuff and who He is, the Father and Spirit and Truth and everything.

But we do really well talking about us and what we know.

That also includes suffering.

So we have confidence to grumble when there's not enough food or drink and also when we suffer.

Now, suffering is related to food and drink because we actually use words that are physical in relation to the soul in suffering.

Like hunger and thirst.

And we know these terms are used in the Bible and we hear from Jesus on the cross, I thirst.

There is a spiritual thirst that happens.

The God allows us to endure physically to build up that thirst, that hunger for Him.

That's where the woman at the well is.

When she comes for drinking water at Jacob's well, which by the way was like a meeting place to meet your spouse, historically.

I think Jacob himself and Moses went to the well, met their spouse.

So you have that play in the long form.

He talks about her.

failed marriages.

That's part of, a big part of her suffering.

And she's living in shame and guilt.

She's coming in middle of the day when nobody came to draw water so no one would see her.

But she approaches with suffering, a suffering heart, a suffering soul.

And you see as soon as he mentions the water he offers, she said, give me this water.

She's thirsting for it.

Somebody who's offering me substance, someone's offering me love and respect and dignity as he's starting to show her.

That's the water Christ offers.

It's the same reaction.

Again, we know food and drink.

You speak our language, we're going to respond.

In John 6, he speaks about the bread of life.

Whoever eats the bread from heaven will live forever.

They say, give us this bread.

That's the real food we long for.

So he offers her this water.

And she responds, give me this water.

She's very open.

Her situation life through that suffering really opens her heart to what He's offering.

And that's what God sometimes allows for us to suffer and to bring us to our knees in order to be open to Him.

I think if she hadn't suffered like she did, she wouldn't have been there.

Or at least had been there in the way that it happened and opened to him.

Look at what happened as a result.

She had this life-changing experience.

She recognizes Him as the Christ.

She brings Him to the town, and everyone in the town is converted.

And amazing statements.

He's identifying himself as the Christ.

Where does that happen?

elsewhere in the gospel.

Like nowhere.

That He says, am He.

And then the crowd said, this is truly the Savior of the world.

So we complain, understandably so, and sometimes I tell people, complain to God rather than everyone else around you.

That's going to be healthier for everybody.

He can take it.

But there is value in suffering.

I think our being here today, there's a lot of evidence.

If we hadn't been through what we've been through, we wouldn't be here, most of us.

I've said before, if I didn't suffer at a young age, I wouldn't be a priest right now.

Life brought me to my knees, and I went searching for Him.

Well, I went searching for other things in the world, especially drink.

But nothing lasted.

Nothing was quenching that real deep thirst that Christ offers and quenches.

That's what she encounters, that's what you've encountered, and you keep coming back to the well here.

Because you're open.

Life has brought you to your knees at some point, and you met Him like she did.

And that's why He allows it.

He allows us to be humbled and to be in need of Him.

And to quench that real deep thirst we have of the soul.

It's really truly God who feeds us and quenches our thirst.