March 8, 2026
3rd Sunday
Lent
FOCUS: We are invited to bring our thirst to God.
In the sacred season of Lent, we are invited to acknowledge our thirst and our need for God. Let us not mask it or hide it with distractions or goods which cannot ultimately satisfy. We are invited instead to bring our thirst to God and, like the Samaritan woman, simply ask: Lord, give me this water, the water which will make us never thirst again.
What's in Your Heart
Aren't the readings this week about the journey of faith? The Israelites in the desert, with some stubbornness, come to trust in the God who really is with them and saves them. Saint Paul speaks of the power of faith to bring believers to the grace of hope and salvation. And in the long gospel story, the Samaritan woman moves from unbelief to faith to testifying in the Christ who brings living water.
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What has been your personal "exodus"? When have you felt as if you were traveling through the desert? Where did you find "water," the living presence of God?
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The Samaritan woman came to faith through a direct experience of Jesus. What are your most personal encounters with the Lord?
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She also testified to her neighbors about Jesus. Where do you make your most effective testimony to your faith?
Homily Stories
I remember my friend Joachim whenever I hear the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
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Joachim was a German missionary priest in Africa, and we attended the same Catholic study program in New York. As our group sometimes did, we ventured into Harlem one weekend to experience worship at the A.M.E. congregation of black theologian James Cone.
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Joachim, whom we teased relentlessly for his stereotypical German response to things—mostly his non-emotional response to things—quietly wept to see members of the choir come down the aisle together. They walked with a slow synchronized sway, in rhythm to the opening hymn.
“That’s exactly how women in Tanzania walk to the village well together … and always have,” he said later. We pondered the power of collective ancestral memory—and the pain of the Samaritan woman who didn’t visit the well with other women of her village.
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Lately I’ve been thinking of Joachim in other ways, too, especially as the United States wrangles with its painful legacy of white supremacy—not just the KKK but more recent traits that seem to echo Nazi Germany. Joachim was too young to experience the Hitler years. But he wasn’t too young for the Frankfort Auschwitz Trials of the 1960s, which left a generation of Germans wrestling with personal versus institutional guilt.
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Joachim latched fiercely onto issues of racial inequality in our classes, not just as a German but as a beloved servant to the poor in Tanzania and Mozambique. Biblical Samaritan stories were personal to him, for Samaritans were despised as being racially and culturally inferior.
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Samaritan stories were dear to Pope Francis, too, who made the parable of the Good Samaritan the focus of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, urging a “culture of encounter” to overcome indifference and prejudice. Like Jesus, he urges us to emulate the Good Samaritan—to “Go and do likewise.”
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First Reading
Second Reading
Gospel
Quotes
Love does not care if a brother or sister in need comes from one place or another. For love shatters the chains that keep us isolated and separate; in their place, it builds bridges.
—Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti (“All Brothers”), 2020.