Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The Woman at the Well, bulletin article for 3-23-14



THIRST QUENCHING
We have all experienced the sensation of thirst, where our mouths and throats are parched so much so that we describe it as “dry as a desert.” I remember as a kid getting so thirsty playing with my friends during the summer, that as I drank water from the garden hose, I would fill my mouth so that it overflowed and the water would run down my face onto my tee shirt. As human beings we use the word thirst to describe many of our wants and needs. There is a false prevailing tendency to believe that as we pursue the wants and needs of our lives, we do it solely on our own. We take pride in being ‘self-made’ individuals and refuse to acknowledge the intervention or help we receive from others, even God. This is a residual effect from Original Sin. We are not ‘self-made,’ rather we are ‘God-made.’ God has poured into our lives, through Jesus in the Holy Spirit, all the good and all the gifts we possess. On our own, we, like the Israelites in the first reading, are unable to satisfy the deep thirsts of our lives. Jesus reminds us today, as he does the Samaritan woman, that it is only in God that our thirst for all will be quenched forever.

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