Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 23 March 2014

Via Latina Catacombs 4th C

Third Sunday of Lent Year A

When I was younger I used to wonder how my evangelical friends could say that Jesus was their friend, I never seemed to have that understanding of him as a ‘real’ presence in my life, but a wise experienced monk told me not to worry, he reminded me that Christ comes to us indifferent ways and suggested that I look for him in the Scriptures and in my ministry of celebrating the liturgy and preaching. Wise suggestions, because for me the practice of lectio divina, reading the scriptures so that they speak to the heart, coupled with good solid scripture study to help further understanding, has certainly helped me to understand the Jesus present in the situations of our lives.

Take John’s Gospel about the Samaritan woman of Sychar meeting Jesus at the well! For me it’s one of the most moving stories about Jesus, why? I think perhaps it is because a close examination of the situation, with a bit of help from good biblical scholarship, gives back to this woman her very important place in the Church. She is, quite literally the first person to whom Jesus chooses to reveal himself as Messiah and also the first evangelist in the Gospel of John. That in itself should cause us to take notice, for this unknown outsider with problems , a Samaritan woman whose name we do not know, is the first bearer of the encounter with the Lord.

I hope that makes us all sit up! Yet again the Gospel shatters some of the myths created about ministry and proclamation, a woman’s preaching converts the Sychar community, …‘ Many Samaritans of that town believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony’!

In this story we have the longest recorded private conversation of Jesus in the New Testament, one which breaks boundaries and allows Jesus to speak freely to her of new spiritual truths such as the living water of life . Though at first she is confused, she eventually understands what Jesus is telling her, and believes in Him.

Her own personal and spiritual situation is difficult, a person trapped by religious laws, yet now freed in Jesus, who is for her the ta’eb, the true restorer of the Divine Law of mercy and love. It is also a reminder that gender is never an obstacle to ministering the presence of Christ!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.