Witness (Pope Francis)

   It is necessary to remember that witness also includes professed faith, that is, convinced and manifest adherence to God the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, who created us out of love, who redeemed us. A faith that transforms us, that transforms our relationships, the criteria and the values that determine our choices. 

   Witness, therefore, cannot be separated from consistency between what one believes and what one proclaims, and what one lives. Every one of us is called to respond to three fundamental questions, posed in this way by Paul VI: “Do you believe what you are proclaiming? Do you live what you believe? Do you preach what you live? 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: Vanessa DiSilvio as the Samaritan woman at the well in The Chosen, https://foursignposts.com/2020/06/11/review-the-chosen/
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Love changes us (Walter Mosley / Henri Nouwen)

We are not trapped or locked up in these bones.
No, no. We are free to change.
 And love changes us. 

--Walter Mosley

    A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to a voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can't wait for you to see it!” Imagine. 

   We must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is God-with-you.” 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Artemisia Gentileschi, Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1637), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cristo_e_la_samaritana_al_pozzo_%281637%29_-_Artemisia_Gentileschi.jpg
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What His eyes see (Valerie Lewis-Mosley / Manuel Cardoso)

   Jesus looked beyond her faults and saw her need. He did not dwell on her past human brokenness. He acknowledges the truth so that he could bring her to a place of truth and it is here that the healing begins. Jesus looks at her and mirrors to her what His eyes see, when He gazes upon her. 

   Jesus does not allow the limitations and taboos of the time, religiosity, culture, and gender- to define how He sees this woman. It is in the recognizing her human dignity- that He talks with her and walks with her and lets her know that she is His own! You see, Jesus saw her, and He sees us! 

   Where the world makes us invisible – we are made visible again in Christ! This is the faith we are initiated into at the well of Baptism. It is this proclamation of conversion and metanoia and faith that we are called to run and tell about. We are called to lead others out of a place of invisibility and into the light. A “Well” Woman’s Witness so to speak! The testimony of one who has been healed and made whole, plunged into the Living Water! 

--Valerie Lewis-Mosley, RN, OPA 

To hear Portuguese composer Manuel Cardoso’s beautifully meditative piece, Aquam quam ego dabo, click on the video below. The words are: Aquam quam ego dabo / Si quis biberit ex ea / Non sitiet in aeternum / Dixit Dominus mulieri Samaritanae, or The water which I shall give / if anyone shall drink of it / he shall never thirst / Said the Lord to the Samaritan woman. 

Image source: https://www.johnbmacdonald.com/blog/a-jesus-encounter-of-a-different-kind Quotation source
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The Bible's vision of sin (Timothy Keller)

      The Bible’s vision of sin is not just a list. It’s a story of what went wrong. And how grace enters in. 

--Timothy Keller,
What is Wrong with the World?

Image source: Raphael Sanzio, fresco, Moses Hit the Rock, Vatican Apostolic Palace (1518-1519), https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/water-from-a-walking-rock/
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He who desired to drink (St. Augustine / Carole M. Stephens)

He who desired to drink
thirsted for the faith of the woman.

 --St. Augustine 

 

   When the woman came to the well, Jesus—the embodiment of living water—said simply, ‘Give me to drink.’ Our Savior will likewise speak to us in a voice we recognize when we come to Him—for He knows us. He meets us where we are. And because of who He is and what He has done for us, He understands. Because He has experienced our pain, He can give us living water when we seek it. He taught this to the Samaritan woman when He said, ‘If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.’ Finally understanding, the woman responded in faith and asked, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not.’ 

   When we come to Him with humble and teachable hearts—even if our hearts are heavy with mistakes, sins, and transgressions—He can change us, ‘for he is mighty to save.’ And with hearts changed, we can, like the Samaritan woman, go into our own cities—our homes, schools, and workplaces—to witness of Him. 

--Carole M. Stephens,
The Master Healer

Image source: Angelica Kauffman, Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (1796), https://www.wikiart.org/en/angelica-kauffman/christ-and-the-samaritan-woman-at-the-well-1796
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 8, 2026: Hope does not disappoint...

Hope does not disappoint…
What does it take for us to trust in God? 

   As they traverse the desert on their way to the Promised Land in the Book of Exodus, the people of Israel have every reason to grumble against Moses. After all, they are afraid they will die here of thirst with their children and their livestock! It is not an idle complaint. God’s promise was clear; God promised to take care of them. And yet the moment they are afflicted, the promise goes out the window. Their hearts, as Psalm 33 states, are hardened, and they test the Lord, rejecting God and turning on Moses. But Moses turns to God, knowing that God can provide what he himself can’t. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it, God tells Moses. Moses relies on God to do the unexpected, to lead him where he needs to be, rather than where he wants to be. 

   When, in John’s Gospel, Jesus comes to Jacob’s well in Sychar, a town of Samaria, he plans to call those rejected by the Jews to have faith in him. His encounter with the Samaritan woman is transformative; he is calling her – and her town – to something new, opening her slowly to the revelation present in her midst, Jesus himself, the Christ. Jesus is not caught up in the woman’s possible sin; Jesus is caught up in her personhood and in the dignity of her humanity and in her capacity to give witness. Trusting in the Lord who entrusts her with his presence, the Samaritan woman runs to town filled with the Spirit, leaving behind her water jug but carrying with her living water that she brings to her community to drink. 

    We too are called to trust, to faith, to belief in that which we cannot prove. We are called to take a leap beyond all physical evidence and to trust in all that God has revealed. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul reminds them that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; his is the grace in which we stand, a capacity to stand and give witness. Our struggle is to get past our wants and needs and to remain hopeful for that which is to come, that which is promised – his love for us, a love greater than any we have ever imagined. For that is where true faith leads us, beyond our comprehension, stretching us farther than we ever thought possible, so long as our hearts are open to his revelation and to his promise.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Bless the world (John J. Morris S.J.)

Mighty God, Father of all,
Compassionate God, Mother of all,
Bless every person I have met,
every face I have seen,
every voice I have heard,
especially those most dear.
Bless every city, town and
street that I have known.
Bless every sight I have seen,
every sound I have heard,
every object I have touched.
In some mysterious way
these have all fashioned my life:
all that I am,
I have received.
Great God, bless the world. 

--John J. Morris, S.J. 

Image source: Snow on Mt. Tam, February 24, 2023, https://millvalleylit.com/rare-snow-on-mt-tam/
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