“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95)
In today’s readings we hear how the Israelites were coming to doubt in God’s care for them. In light of their physical hardships – not enough water – they longed to return to Egypt, and to slavery. In their hardship and struggle they began to wonder, “is the LORD in our midst or not?” This question from our ancestors becomes our own question this Lent. By now, we have identified attachments to give up, sins to rid ourselves from, and spiritual practices that will draw us close to God. However, as we have set out on this Lenten road of conversion and spiritual growth, we have also tasted how deeply our love for these attachments, weakness, and failings really are. Perhaps our Lenten road has caused us to thirst for our old comforts, or to doubt the Lord’s goodness in how we are being purified? At this point in Lent we might be wondering, like our ancestors, “is the Lord in our midst or not?”
But our readings today do not only leave us with our ancestral grumblings, we also receive a taste of the Lord’s fulfillment of our longing, and of our thirst. In the Gospel, the Lord, (now the one thirsty like the Israelite’s in the 1streading), uses his biological thirst as an opportunity for grace and the eventual conversion of the Samaritan woman. We never hear of him receiving a drink, but only of receiving the woman’s conversion and the conversion of her village. We can see in this story a reflection of Jesus’ thirst on the cross – it is a thirst for souls! Let us pray today and this week that our Lenten fasting, and thirsting, might awaken in us a Christ-like thirst for souls, and also remind us of God’s thirst for us: for our love and trust.