Lent 3 B.  March 19 2006.  Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 9:30, 6PM.  Exodus 17: 3-7.  Romans 5: 1-2, 5-8.  John 4: 5-24

I love snow days. One day last week after struggling through snow up to my knees to get from the rectory to the church I found that very few people were able to come to Mass and that most of my day had to be cancelled.  When I went home for lunch I decided to stay there for a while.  I climbed into my big easy chair in front of a picture window with a dog sleeping on each side of me. I could feel the deep peace and safety of the moment as I watched it snow and let the rest of the world slip out of my mind.  I was forced, even trapped, into living and enjoying the present moment without thinking about the past or the future. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about either one.

Often we are too busy to notice and enter into the world around us.  Because we see snow as a problem we may not take time to enjoy it.  Then there are all the other problems that keep us from entering into each day.  We all carry burdens from the past, resentments, guilt, troubling images of ourselves and of others, angers and hurts that keep buzzing in our heads, keeping us from paying attention to the present moment. When we are not dealing with the past we are often dealing with the future. Anxieties, worries, pressures and concerns and a multiplicity of plans capture and control our minds making it very difficult to keep our attention on what is happening right now. For many of us there is seldom a time that we are not thinking or worrying about something.  When our minds are so preoccupied with the past and the future, how can we ever give time to the present moment – the only moment we really have. 

Jesus met a hard working woman of Samaria at the village well where she had to come each day when the sun was the hottest to draw water from the well for use at home.  She had had a very difficult life.  She had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband.  She undoubtedly had enough past hurts to fill her mind and heart with constant sorrow.  As a poor woman living with a man who would not marry her she must have had many anxieties about the insecurity of her future.  Besides, she was a Samaritan woman; she was a member of a religious sect that Jews would not even talk to because of their lack of proper understanding of the faith that both Jews and Samaritans had received from Abraham and Moses.  She didn’t even have an authentic understanding of God to depend on.

When Jesus walked into her life and asked for a drink of water, the Samaritan woman had three choices.  She could have been so preoccupied with her own pain that she didn’t even notice he was there.  She could have been so worried about her future insecurity that she didn’t have time to pay attention to Jesus.  Or she could have stopped where she was and taken the opportunity to speak with Jesus, putting the past and the future aside. That is what she did; paying attention to Jesus completely changed her life.  The questions Jesus asked led the woman to realize that even in her wounded condition Jesus could give her living water. Jesus could make a river of life-giving water flow within her so that she would never be thirsty or resentful or worried again.  All she had to do was to let go of the hurts and worries that kept her on the surface of her life and allow Jesus to lead her deep within herself where God’s grace frees and teaches us.   

If our waking moments and our sleepless nights are filled with resentment, self-pity and anger it is impossible to enter the depths of our souls because our preoccupation with the past keeps getting in the way.  If the hours of our days and nights are filled with worries and anxieties about the future, it is impossible to follow Jesus into the depths of our souls.  The things that preoccupy our minds and hearts keep getting in the way.

One of the essential disciplines of Lent is quiet stillness in the present moment so that Jesus can lead us beyond our fears and anxieties to the deepest part of our souls.  Many of us are not only too busy, we are also constantly preoccupied with a past that we can do nothing about because it is past, and anxious about a future that has not yet come, and may never come in the way that are worrying about it. 

The past is the past.  Let go of it.  Ask for forgiveness.  Seek healing.  All of our relationships are better, including our relationship with God, if we put aside other thoughts and focus on the relationship, not the noise, guilt and anger in our hearts.

The future has not yet come.  We can guess and worry about a future we don’t know for sure.  All of our relationships are better, including our relationship with God, when we put away our anxiety about the future and focus on the person we are talking to right now.

The rest of the world became unimportant when the Samaritan woman put aside the rest of the world to talk to Jesus.  In fact, the rest of her world changed completely because Jesus led her to a new and deeper place in her heart.  I recommend times of prayer to you, times with Jesus alone, freed from concern about the past and anxiety about the future.  Dying to the past and to the future long enough to let Jesus lead us to a better place within us can completely transform our lives.  For the grace to quiet our minds to make room for a deeper conversation with the Lord we give God thanks and praise.