The Third Sunday of Lent [A]
Exodus 17:3-7  +  Romans 5:1-2,5-8  +  John 4:5-42
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Wellington, KS
March 8, 2026

This year on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent, our Gospel passage comes from the Gospel according to Saint John.  Saint John’s Gospel account differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke in many ways.  One of the unique things about John, which we will notice during these three Sundays, is that John often expresses double meanings through Jesus’ words and actions.

For example, when Jesus cures a blind man, the evangelist goes out of his way to show how that cure—besides being a physical healing—is also a sign that Jesus can cure a person’s spiritual blindness.  Also, in John Jesus speaks with Nicodemus late at night about being “born again”, which Nicodemus misunderstands.  Nicodemus goes on and on thinking that Jesus is talking about being physically “born again”, when Jesus is talking about being spiritually born again.  In fact, most of the double meanings in John occur when people confuse the worldly and the heavenly.  To be honest, that’s a lot like our lives as sinners:  we confuse the worldly and the heavenly, putting our focus and attention in life in the wrong place.  St. John is trying to shift our attention in the right direction.

So in today’s Gospel passage, St. John the Evangelist describes Jesus as He’s approaching the Samaritan town where Jacob’s well is found.  Jesus is “tired from His journey”, and so He sits down at the well.  The evangelist also notes that “it was about noon”, implying that Jesus—in His sacred humanity—was tired and hot and thirsty.  Jesus is like us in all things but sin.  His human body needed water just as yours does.  That’s why on Good Friday as He was dying on the Cross, Jesus cried out, “I thirst”.[1]  Only St. John the Evangelist records Jesus as saying that on the Cross:  Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not.  For St. John, Jesus saying “I thirst” on the Cross ties into the other teachings that the evangelist records in his Gospel account, especially today’s Gospel Reading.

Jesus, through His human need for water, leads the Samaritan woman to see that she also needs something.  Here’s where the double meaning in this passage starts to unfold.  Only a few verses at the start of today’s Gospel passage are a discussion about a drink of water for Jesus’ physical thirst.  After those first few verses, Jesus shifts the attention away from Himself, and away from His physical need.  He shifts the attention towards the Samaritan woman, and toward her spiritual need.

The spiritual thirst that Jesus describes is one that only He can provide water for.  The spiritual water that Jesus offers, He calls “living water”.  In the physical world, water is not “living” in the way that a plant or animal is.  Nonetheless, the spiritual water that flows from Jesus does bear life.  This spiritual water flows from Jesus through two of the sacraments that Jesus gave as gifts to His Church:  the Sacrament of Baptism, and the Sacrament of Confession.  The Sacraments of Baptism and Confession are similar in many ways, all of which can help us appreciate the Good News that Jesus is sharing with the Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel passage.  Both Baptism and Confession cause three changes in the person who receives them devoutly.

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In both the Sacrament of Baptism and the Sacrament of Confession, the person is first of all washed clean of sin.  In Baptism, the waters wash away all sin:  both Original Sin, and (if the newly baptized is older than the age of reason) any actual sin committed by that individual.

Unfortunately, many people—even many baptized Christians!—only think about Baptism in terms of having sins washed away so that they can get to Heaven.  They stop there when they think about Baptism.  They think of Baptism only in terms of getting to Heaven.  Getting to Heaven, of course, is one part of why we’re baptized:  in fact, it’s the ultimate reason; but it’s not the only reason.  That reduction of Baptism is what led many in the early Church to delay their own baptism until they were on their deathbed, so that they could be more sure of getting into Heaven!

It’s easy to see how self-focused this kind of thinking is:  that I receive God’s grace for me, in order to get me into Heaven.  But Jesus did not give His life for us, so that we would make our spiritual life about our self.  Instead, Jesus gave His life for us, so that we would give our lives for others.  Thinking that Jesus gave His life for us, so that we could make our life about our self is how the world thinks.  Jesus is trying to shift our attention to the heavenly way of thinking:  so that we would live by Christ’s words that, “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, [while] whoever loses his life for [Jesus’] sake…will save it”.[2]

Similar to the Sacrament of Baptism, in a sincere, valid Confession, all personal sins—mortal and venial—are washed away.  Yet many Catholics reduce the practice of Confession to only one aim:  just getting to Heaven, or even just staying out of hell.  That’s why many Catholics only go to confession when they’ve committed a mortal sin.  But is Confession only for washing away past sins?

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The second change in the person who receives the Sacrament of Baptism or Confession is a preparation for the future.  Not just our future in Heaven, but also our future on earth:  however many days, months, and years that might remain for us here on earth.  In both Baptism and Confession, God washes something away from our souls:  namely, sin.  But He also infuses graces into our souls, for the sake of a stronger life on earth.

At the moment of your baptism, when God washed sin away from your soul, He put in your soul the graces of the three supernatural virtues:  faith, hope, and charity.  God gave these to you not only to help you get to Heaven, but also to change the shape of your earthly life.

Similarly, in Confession,  when God washes sin away from your soul, He infuses into your soul the divine gift that the Church calls “sacramental grace”.  The graces from Confession give you, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle”.[3]  What does the “Christian battle” involve?  Consider just two its demands.

One of the more challenging demands of the “Christian battle” is standing strong in the face of temptation.  The Gospel Reading on the First Sunday of Lent described Jesus spending forty days in the desert being tempted.  We are like Jesus in facing temptation, but we are much weaker than Jesus Christ.  However, the graces from the Sacrament of Confession strengthen us for that “Christian battle” against temptation.

Another challenging demand of the “Christian battle” is forgiving others in a Christ-like manner.  When someone has deeply wronged us—especially someone in our family—there’s a temptation to whitewash over it.  We’re tempted to just mouth the words “I forgive you” without really meaning it in order to avoid dealing with the problem in a serious way.  Often we do this because it’s just too demanding to get into the weeds and really face everything involved in both the sin that caused the problem, and the reconciliation that’s truly needed.  So we just punt, and mouth the words “I forgive you.”  That’s not how Jesus forgave on the Cross.  He put His entire Self into the reconciliation of God and man, and the graces from Confession strengthen us to forgive others in the way that Jesus did on Calvary.

This latter example of the “Christian battle” leads into the third change that Baptism and Confession bring about.  This change is also illustrated in today’s Gospel Reading.  This passage is not just about the two persons engaged in dialogue, although at first the Samaritan woman might think so, just as you and I might think that our lives as Christians are about our selves.  This passage is also about those whom the evangelist mentions at the end of this Gospel Reading:  those who “began to believe in [Jesus] because of the word of the woman who testified.”

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Those words at the end of today’s Gospel passage illustrate the third change that Baptism and Confession bring about within the Christian soul.  The third change relates to being part of something larger than your own self.  In Baptism, this took place through God the Father’s adoption of you, which joined your life to the lives of your brothers and sisters in Christ.  In Confession, you are reconciled with both your God and your neighbor.  In the life of the Samaritan woman, this took place through the testimony that she gave to others because of the “living water” that she drank.

So here we can see the problem with “deathbed baptisms”.  What if the Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel passage had avoided Jesus all her life, and had waited until the end of her earthly life to drink of that “living water”?  How many people around her never would have heard her testimony, and therefore never would have come to Jesus?  The longer we wait to allow Jesus’ living waters into our lives, the longer it will be before we can be an instrument of God’s grace, helping others who may have no other way of learning more about Jesus except through our words and actions.

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[1] John 19:28;  cf. Psalm 69:21.

[2] Mark 8:35.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1496.

The Second Sunday of Lent [A]
Genesis 12:1-4  +  2 Timothy 1:8-10  +  Matthew 17:1-9
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
March 1, 2026

The Transfiguration is one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary because it “sheds light” upon who Jesus truly is.  Who is Jesus? Part of Jesus’ identity flows from His divinity.  This is the more obvious aspect of the scene of the Transfiguration.  The glory of Jesus’ divinity shone just for a moment on Mount Tabor before Peter, James and John.

But why was the glory of the Transfiguration only momentary?  The answer to that question explains why we hear this Gospel passage during Lent, and also explains the other part of Jesus’ identity, which is His sacred humanity, which He offered in sacrifice on the Cross for our salvation.  How these two go together—on the one hand, the everlasting glory of Jesus’ divinity, and on the other, the temporary suffering of Jesus in His humanity—is the heart of today’s Gospel passage.

One of the greatest modern works of Catholic devotional reading is a work titled Divine Intimacy.  The author—Father Gabriel—was a 20th century Carmelite friar.  In one of his meditations in this work, Father Gabriel notes that the glory of Jesus’ divinity, which shone forth at the Transfiguration, would have shone fully from His birth onwards, had Jesus allowed it to do so.  But He did not allow that, just like what He does not allow at the end of today’s Gospel passage after the Transfiguration is over: Jesus charges the three apostles, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”  Throughout His earthly life, Jesus wanted to resemble us sinners as much as possible by appearing “in the likeness of sinful flesh”[1], as Saint Paul put it in his Letter to the Romans.

However, we need to back up. Right before the events of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus had predicted to His apostles His Passion and Death.  St. Peter refused to accept this, declaring, “God forbid, Lord!  No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  Jesus did not take this lying down, but instead replied, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”[2]

Jesus’ harshness, which He considered justified given the importance of the point, is reinforced by what Jesus says next:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[3]  That leads right into today’s Gospel passage, and the glory of the Transfiguration.

Jesus followed His difficult message—both about His own impending Passion and Death, and the need for His disciples to give up their lives For Him—by revealing one glimpse of His glory to Peter, James, and John.  But as heavenly as this glory appeared to Peter, who wanted to pitch tent and rest there, Jesus was making a larger point.  Father Gabriel in Divine Intimacy makes two interesting connections between the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor and the Crucifixion on Mt. Calvary.  “Moses and [Elijah] appeared on Thabor on either side of the Savior”[4], just as on Calvary two thieves appeared on either side of Him.  And as the thieves on Calvary spoke with Jesus about His death, so St. Luke in his account of the Transfiguration tells us that Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus about His approaching Passion.[5]

So what’s the first point that Jesus is trying to get across to us by His Transfiguration?  Jesus “wished to teach His disciples… that it was impossible… to reach the [eternal] glory of the Transfiguration [in Heaven] without passing through suffering.”  We might say that these two are intertwined:  eternal glory and temporary suffering.  “It was the same lesson that [Jesus] would give later to the two disciples at Emmaus [on the day of Jesus’ Resurrection]:  ‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?’ What has been disfigured by sin cannot regain its original supernatural beauty except by way of purifying suffering.”[6]

Today’s Gospel’s first point is that we cannot avoid suffering if we’re going to follow Jesus. The second point is about how the glory of the Transfiguration is part of our ordinary Christian lives in the 21st century.  This point has to do with what theology calls “spiritual consolations”.  You could describe spiritual consolations as small gifts of grace that God gives whenever He chooses.  Spiritual consolations are above and beyond the graces we receive through the sacraments and private prayer.  These spiritual consolations may take many different forms, and God gives them for various reasons, but He always gives them as pure gifts.  They’re sort of like a husband giving his wife roses, not on her birthday, and not on their anniversary, but on a random Tuesday, “just because”.

Father Gabriel in his work Divine Intimacy explains that “[s]piritual consolations are never an end in themselves, and we should neither desire them nor try to retain them for our own satisfaction. … To Peter, who wanted to stay on Thabor in the sweet vision of the transfigured Jesus, God Himself replied by inviting [Peter] to listen to and follow the teachings of His beloved Son.”[7]  And what had that Son just taught?  That Son had just taught Peter and all His disciples that He—Jesus Himself—must suffer and die, and that each of them, and each of us, must deny himself, take up his own cross, and follow Jesus to Calvary.  That’s the only way to the glory of Heaven.

Father Gabriel continues:  “God does not console us for our entertainment, but rather for our encouragement, for our strengthening, for the increase of our generosity in suffering for love of Him.”  Then Father Gabriel turns back to today’s Gospel passage.

“The vision [of the Transfiguration] disappeared; the apostles raised their eyes and saw nothing [except] Jesus alone, and with ‘Jesus alone’, they came down from the mountain.  This is what we must always seek and it must be sufficient for us:  Jesus alone…  Everything else—consolations, helps, friendships (even spiritual ones), … esteem, encouragement…—may be good to the extent that God permits us to enjoy them.  He very often makes use of them to encourage us in our weakness; but if, through certain circumstances, His divine Hand takes all these things away, we should not be upset or disturbed.

“It is precisely at such times that we can prove to God more than ever… that He is our All and that He alone suffices.  On these occasions the loving soul finds itself in a position to give God one of the finest proofs of its love:  to be faithful to Him, to trust in Him, and to persevere in its resolution to give all….  The soul may be in darkness, that is, subject to misunderstanding, bitterness, material and spiritual solitude combined with interior desolation.  [When you reach this point, the] time has come to repeat, ‘Jesus alone’, to come down from Thabor with Him, and to follow Him with the Apostles even to Calvary ….”[8]

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[1] Romans 8:3.

[2] Matthew 16:22,23.

[3] Matthew 16:24-25.

[4] Divine Intimacy, 309.

[5] Luke 9:30-31.

[6] Divine Intimacy, 310, quoting Luke 24:26.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 310-311.

CLICK ON THE COVER BELOW FOR MORE ABOUT DIVINE INTIMACY.
Please note that Father Gabriel lived before the Second Vatican Council. His meditations are arranged according to the liturgical calendar used during his life.