What will separate?
Ask yourself this: Have I lost hope? Have I fallen into despair? Have I given into fear and anxiety? Have I forgotten the gift of God?
We live in strange times brothers and sisters, when viruses and sicknesses has the power to cause panic, where people stock up on toilet paper (?!??!?)… and bottled water from the groceries stores, and where now our neighbors, even the people sitting right next to us, are seen as a threat to our life. How quickly we can move from “love your neighbor as Christ has loves us”, to something like “protect yourself from your neighbor at all cost.” How quickly we can move from Christian charity to human selfishness...
Now I’m not saying some prudent precautions shouldn’t be taken, and I’ll address those at the end of Mass. But what I am saying is that, in the midst of our current situation, we cannot forget our Christian faith... we cannot forget our faith which leads to a deep Christian hope in God... and this hope gives life to our Christian charity for our neighbor.
We must be people filled with the peace of Christ and not filled with fear and anxiety of the world. St. Paul reminds us: “Brothers and sisters: Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.”
In the face of danger and death, we must stand in peace and hope in Christ Jesus our Savior. It is easy, in the face of death, to forget the hope in eternal life that we profess here every week as Christians.
“If you knew the gift of God!” – Jesus says to the Samaritan Woman, “If you [only] knew the gift of God!” Then instead of running to Kroger for bottled waters, we would run to Jesus for living water. Instead of worrying only about a virus that may or may not kill us, we would also worry about the sin in our life that’s killing our soul. Imagine that... imagine if everyone took as much care and precaution against sin and the near occasion of sin, as we are doing now against this virus, the Church, the world would look a lot different.
“If you knew the gift of God...”
You know, I love the story of the Samaritan Women at the Well. If I had to pick a favorite passage from the Bible, this would be it. There is such a richness in this Gospel that one could spend years letting it penetrate our hearts. But today, I’ll leave you with just two points today.
1) Jesus is already waiting.
He is already there waiting for you. Before the Samaritan woman arrives at the well, Jesus is already there waiting for her. Every time you come to prayer, every time you come to confession, every time you step into a church, Jesus is already there, waiting for you. He loves you before you even knew to love Him back. He was there first. Then at the very moment the Samaritan Woman arrives, Jesus says to her “give me a drink.” He was thirsty for water, but even more so, he was thirsty for her heart. Jesus thirsts for you way before you even thirst for him.
The Catechism says that “prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours” (CCC 2560). Does it matter that Jesus’ thirsts for me? Jesus thirsts for my heart, for my charity, for my patience, for my purity, for my soul, for my sanctity. He waits and thirsts for a deep intimate relationship with you! To borrow the words from Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa who, let me remind you, went into the dirty and diseased laden slums of Calcutta in order to love the sick and dying, she says this to us:
“Jesus wants me to tell you again [today]…, how much love He has for each one of you—beyond all you can imagine. I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus—one to one—you and Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel—but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living Jesus—not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you? Ask for the grace, He is longing to give it. Until you can hear Jesus in the silence of your own heart, you will not be able to hear Him saying “I thirst” in the hearts of the poor. Never give up this daily intimate contact with Jesus as the real living person—not just the idea. How can we last even one day without hearing Jesus say “I love you”—impossible.”
“Our soul needs to hear Jesus saying “I love you” to us every day as much as the body needs to breathe the air. If not, our prayer is dead— our meditation-only thinking. Jesus wants you each to hear Him—speaking in the silence of your heart.”
In these days to come, as many things are canceled, you will have plenty of time with family but also plenty of time to pray. Take advantage of this time. Jesus is already waiting for you! The fount of living water that Christ offers you will never run out… and instead is the source of eternal life, your eternal life. Jesus promises us, “the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”….
My second point today is this: Our past, our sin, is not an obstacle for God’s love; it is actually a very powerful way to attract His love. He uses who we were and who we are to transform us into who we are meant to be. It is precisely the Samaritan woman’s past that Jesus uses to reach her heart. Sometimes the devil may try to use the hurts and our own mistakes in our life to make us feel like it’s impossible for Jesus to really love us. But this is the opposite of what Jesus desires. St. Paul reminds us, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He not only loves you but he longs for you, even in the midst of sin, he thirsts for your heart. When you encounter Jesus, don’t be afraid to bring him your past, your sin, your shame, your brokenness. Jesus wants to heal them all, he wants to give us his life. As long as we come to him, to the living Jesus, he will heal us and give us the living water.
As we move through the upcoming days, our hope must be in the Lord. It is in times like this, that I feel like I need to declare again the faith and hope we have in Christ Jesus. As St. Paul declared his faith and hope to the Romans, I declare to you today:
“If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us.
Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised,
who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, [or plague,]
or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? …
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(Romans 8:31b-35, 37-39)
Amen.
