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Welcome to Unpacking the Mass with Keith Nestor. On this podcast, we dig into the week's readings for the upcoming Sunday for the Catholic Church so that when you go to Mass, you are ready to hear what God has to say to you through the Scriptures. So grab your Bibles and let's get digging. Hey friends, welcome to Unpacking the Mass. Today we're looking at the readings for the third Sunday in Lent. We're cruising through Lent, friends. It's hard to believe, but we're almost done, really, when you think about it, and I hope that it's been fruitful for you, and I hope that your time in unpacking the Mass has helped you to apply the readings that we hear in Mass to our lives. Remember, this application is so important because we don't want to just have things go in one ear and out the other. And sometimes even in Mass, it can be so tempting to daydream or wonder, especially if your priest isn't quite on fire that week, or maybe he's talking about something different, or you've got a lot going on. It happens to all of us. And you can walk out of the I don't even know what was said. When we do these readings ahead of time, it gives us the advantage of having a thought in our minds going, I wonder how that's going to get addressed. Or I wonder what will be said about this. And that's really what our hope is. So that's my prayer. If that's been working for you, do me a favor, let me know in the comments what this has helped you with, this Lent specifically. I would greatly appreciate that. Let's begin with the word of prayer, and then we'll jump into the readings. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As we continue to offer our Lenten fasts and our prayers and our almsgiving to you. Lord, we know that you offer us so much more than we could imagine. May the thirst that we have felt in our bodies remind us of the thirst that only you can quench in our souls. We pray these things in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. That's what we're talking about today, is thirst. And I remember when I was a young lad out for wrestling, you know, you have to cut weight, and I had to do that a little bit. Not terrible, but enough to be painful for for me. And I remember the hardest part was not the denial of food, but it was the denial of Water. And I did a 72 hour fast a few months ago that was really hard. 72 hours, no food, but you could drink. And I will tell you this, the times I had to go without water were way harder than going without food. I would go without food for a week versus going without water for even a couple of days. Because you know that feeling when you're thirsty? There's nothing else that matters in the world other than getting something to drink. It's this undeniable feeling. It's almost like needing to breathe. When you're without oxygen, all you can think about is, I need to take my next breath. And you'd give everything that you had for the ability to do that. It's the same type of thing. And this is the analogy and really the experience that we're looking at today in our readings. Because these readings are talking about thirst, and they're talking about how God fulfills that thirst. And what happens to us when we find ourselves in that space where we are thirsting for one thing or another. Where do we go with that? And the idea today is to contrast these two examples really of the thirst that leads us away from God and into grumbling against God, and then a thirst that leads us to God. And we'll see those two examples here. And then we're going to talk about another thirst that trumps all of these as well. Let's look at our first reading today. It's from the book of Exodus, chapter 17. And verse three begins this way. But the people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against Moses and said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And so Moses cried to the Lord, what shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the rod with which you struck the Nile and go, Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the fault finding of the children of Israel, and because they put the Lord to the proof by saying, is the Lord among us or not? Our second reading comes to us from the book of Romans, chapter 5. St. Paul writes these. Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us while we were still weak. At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Why we. One will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still yet sinners, Christ died for us. And then our gospel comes from John, chapter four, rather verses five through 42. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. And so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is asking you give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, and his sons and his cattle? And Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst. The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you said truly. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship The Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ. When he comes, he will show us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman. But none had said, what do you wish? Or, why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar and went away into the city and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the city and were coming to Him. Meanwhile, the disciples besought him, saying, rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat, of which you do not know. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him food? Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, there are yet four months? Then comes the harvest? I tell you, lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps, receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true. One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for that which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them. And he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of your words that we believe. For we have heard for ourselves what we know, that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Wow. So much there to dig into, my friends. And I want to just start really at the end of that. When you encounter Christ and then you share what he's done in your life. Eventually there comes a moment when people hear God working and speaking through you. Or God see working and hear him speaking through you. When no longer it's about you anymore, it becomes what God is doing. That's an awesome feeling, isn't it? Sometimes when we minister to people or Evangelize them. We can get locked into this idea that it's so much about what I have to do and what I have to say. And we can then sometimes, and this happens to me a lot, we can blame ourselves if things don't go well or whatever, and think, oh, I didn't do the best job I could. God must be disappointed. But remember, we got to get ourselves out of the way. Our job is to share what Christ has done, just like this woman did. And then he takes over from there. It's a powerful thing. But let's first back up to our first reading and talk about this concept of thirst and what was going on in the desert. The Israelites have been led out of Egypt into the desert. And because of their rebelliousness, they were there longer than they needed to be. 40 years they wandered. And we, even in our. In our. Our prayer time, we talk about, we don't want to provoke God. We're at Meribah and Massah. They challenged and provoked God. That's in our Liturgy of the hours, our prayer, because this was a moment where people let their thirst cause them to grumble against God. Now, again, we understand that it's a human experience, isn't it, to go through something and look at God and say, when are you going to provide for me? When are you going to do this? But what happens in the midst of this? God shows up in a really powerful way, doesn't he? And it's something that we have to look to in the gospel here. And then, of course, on the cross, which I'll talk about in a second, how these things are connected. Because what God does there in the desert is he has Moses strike this rock, and from that rock water flows and the people drink. Now you might think to yourself, wow. Well, after this, they never grumbled again. Ha. If only. And you know, we can't beat them up too much because we do the same thing. We're fed by Christ often, and God shows up in our lives. But how often do we receive that and then move on to the next thing? And then it's no longer about that thirst for water. It's about a thirst for something else. And what Jesus wants us to recognize is that the thirst that he has come to quench goes beyond these physical thirsts. And yet here we are, still continuing our lives to thirst for so many things other than God. And that's the cause of a lot of our issues, isn't it? I know it is for me. Sometimes it's almost as if God isn't enough. And you wonder how he feels about that when he's given to us so many amazing things. And yet we continue to go after pleasures of the world or prominence or ambition, money, influence, whatever it might be that we seek out more than him almost. We seek that as though we are thirsty and have to have that thirst quenched. So we seek that out in all of these places and God is saying, look, I have come to quench that thirst in our Lenten observance. Part of that involves denying ourselves. And the reason why we do that, or one of the reasons why we do that is to, through our physical thirst, be reminded of our spiritual thirst. Because sometimes those thirsts that we go after from the physical things can become more powerful. And what we need to do oftentimes is make our bodies submit to what we know. The truth is from a spiritual perspective. And so that we can get used to having self denial, so that we can get used to denying the things that our flesh says we have to have in order to have what God says we have to have. But there has to be this paradigm shift that takes place when we go into those moments of thirst and it's either grumbling against God or it's running to God. And that's what we see compared and contrasted here in these two readings. The Israelites grumbled against God, whereas this woman that we see in our Gospel reading turned to Christ. As a matter of fact, she turned to him so powerfully that if you notice this in the text, when she runs away, she leaves the jar behind. She doesn't even take it with her. The thing that she came there for, she leaves behind because what she found there was so much greater. That's what we have to look at, my friends, when we look at our own lives. God fulfills our greatest need, but we have to turn to him instead of grumbling. Now, St. Paul, of course, in our reading in Romans, talks about that this happens for us while we were yet sinners. He didn't wait for us to get this perfect. But I want to make another connection. In First Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 4, Paul also makes another connection, talking about that reading in Exodus, he says, and all drank the same supernatural drink, for they drank from the supernatural rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ. Now if you think about that, I want to just make this connection here and then we'll talk a little bit more about the second reading. And then in the Gospel that rock was cracked. What does that mean? Well, if you think about it, even the Rock that Moses struck with the spear was a picture of Christ. Because what happens at the cross, Christ himself is struck with a rod, right? The spear that lances him. And what comes out? What does the gospel tell us? Blood and water. It's as if this fulfillment is supposed to show us when Christ says, I will give you living water. And. And the water from the rock which was meant to quench the thirst. St. Paul connects all of that together to show us that Christ himself quenches our thirst. Powerful, isn't it? Now, what do we thirst for? I love in the second reading that he talks about, what we receive from Christ is this. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, right? Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God. That's what we're after, my friends. We're after this peace. The peace that comes not from the things of the world, but the peace with God is what we are truly in need of. And that's what salvation is about. That's what being in a state of grace is all about. It's about having peace with God. And you can try to find peace in all sorts of other ways, but if you don't have peace with God, none of it matters. The things of the world will not give you true peace. And we all experience that in various ways, don't we? We've all been down that road where we thought, oh, if only I could just have that thing, or if only I had that problem solved, or if only that issue were taken care of. And then that can happen. And then what happens? Eventually it just turns into something else, doesn't it? It's the universal human experience, and yet we keep chasing that. But really what we're after is peace with God. Now, when this woman encounters Jesus, Jesus reveals to her a different type of thirst. Now, she keeps thinking that he's talking about the material, right? When he says, give me a drink. And she says, what do you mean? You know, how are you going to do this? And he says, if you know who I was, you'd ask me for a drink. She said, how could you get a drink? You need something to come out of the water. You need this. What are you gonna do? And Jesus, like, I am here to give you living water. A different water, a different revelation. And notice how when Jesus gives her this new revelation, nothing else in her life seems to matter. So in the Gospel, we see how the thirst of life brings someone to Jesus. Whereas in the Old Testament reading, we see how people allow their thirst to bring them away. And I want to ask you, what do you do with your thirsts? What do you do with that? But remember one thing that's important here. This is another thirst. Why does Jesus ask her for a drink? Because he is thirsty. Think about that. I'm reminded of Father Michael Gately, who talks a lot about that in his books. I think it's even in the 33 days to morning Glory. I thirst. The words on the cross of Jesus. I thirst. You know, we don't need to know that. But we do. If there was no other meaning behind that than just Jesus was thirsty on the cross, I don't know that that would have made it into the gospel. But the reason why it's made into the gospel is because that thirst that Jesus has isn't just about a material thirst. It's about the thirst of his soul. It's about what he came to do and his desire for peace with God. Not his peace, your peace. He went to the cross for your peace. That peace that we have through faith in Christ was given to us while we were still sinners. When Jesus comes to this woman at the well and he. He asks her for a drink, and he gives her this revelation of who he is. He knows that she's a sinful woman. And he doesn't say to her, hey, I've got something that I want to do in your life or that I want to show you. But first I need you to go back and get all this stuff ironed out. Get rid of these guys, get rid of this guy who's not your husband, get reconciled to your first husband, whatever. Get your life straightened out, then come back to me, and then we can talk. That's not what he does. Too many of us live in that world, don't we? Where we think that that's what either we have to do, or that's what we think other people have to do in order to find that peace with God. The fact is this, what we see in our second reading shows us. And what we see in the gospel show us that Jesus has come before we even can do anything. And he comes to offer that living water to us. Now we have to make a choice. Are we going to be like the Jews who grumbled? Or are we going to be like the woman who listened and received? That's the ultimate choice that we have to make when faced with our thirst. But we have to remember that he also thirsts. And his thirst led him to the cross. His thirst led him to offer himself. Because what he thirsted for was our Peace, our reconciliation. Isn't that beautiful, my friends? And how does this work out with this woman? Does he just give her some theological truth? See, that's often our answer, isn't it? We look at someone who's in a struggle in their life and they're going through some difficulty. They've got some sin, they've got some problems. And what do we often want to do? We want to just give them some theological truth and tell them they better get right with God. Friends, that needs to be part of it, but not all of it. And we'll see a little bit more about that in a second. Because Jesus certainly gives her theological truth. But what else does he do? He gets personal. He gets into her life, doesn't he? He doesn't say, well, I'm just going to keep this in the abstract. No, he says, go and call your husband, knowing full well this woman's situation. And what does she do? Does she throw down her stuff and run away from him and say, how dare you? So this is another response that we get into. When God wants to get personal with you, what do you do? What does she do? She's real. She says, I have no husband. She doesn't lie. She doesn't hide. She doesn't get mad and resentful. How dare you talk to me this way? No, she's just open. See, God takes us and he reveals the truth to us, and then he gets personal with us. That's how we grow. And we only can allow him to do that when we recognize that he's come because he loves us. Too many times we don't want to do that because we're afraid he's going to crush us. But he doesn't want to crush you. He went to the cross because he thirsts for your peace, not because he thirst for your condemnation. You were already condemned. He came to fix that. He came to offer you life. So remember, when you're dealing with the God who says to you, go and call your husband or whatever it might be in your life that gets too personal, remember why he's doing that and lean into it. Run away, don't hide. Don't get mad and say, how dare you? If you do that, you're going to miss out. Instead, he gets personal and he offers himself to her. And what does she do? Wow, I'm blown away. I perceive you are a prophet, but that's not the end of the story. They get into this dialogue and they start talking about God. It's beautiful, isn't it? They start Talking about God and what God is looking for. It's interesting, isn't it? Most of our lives, we're thinking about what we're looking for, but God's looking for something too. What does it say? The Father is looking for worshipers who will worship in spirit and in truth. That's who is God is seeking. Have you thought about that? Or are you still so focused on your own Lenten stuff that you haven't been thinking about God, you've just been thinking about you? That's one of the things our priest, Father Aaron, talked about on his homily at Ash Wednesday. He said, the danger sometimes that we can encounter when we get so focused on our. On our stuff, our religious stuff that we do, especially in Lent, is we just turn inward. All of that is meant to point us to God, not ourselves. Because the Father is the one seeking, right? He's seeking. Jesus is thirsting. Father is seeking worshipers in spirit and in truth. So think of it this way, okay? And I've unpacked this before, but the Spirit. I want you to think about this. The Spirit is that personal thing that God is doing with you in your life. Because for you to worship in spirit means that you mean. Means that it's not just something that you say, but it comes from your heart. And the Spirit of God in you is allowing you those. Those inner cries that you can't even really perceive but are coming out of you. And truth means simply that. Truth. We can get this backwards, can't we? We can get this messed up. We can try to have one without the other, but it doesn't work that way. A lot of people want to have that personal relationship thing going on with Jesus. But when you start talking to them about truth, they go, who are you to tell me the truth? Get away from me with that. I want my Jesus this and my Jesus that, and this is my faith and this is my thing. And they want to create their own version of Christianity. Well, that doesn't work either. Other people just want to focus on truth, but no spirit. They just want to talk about doctrine and theology, but they don't want to connect it to their personal life. When Jesus starts to get personal with them, they go, whoa, hold on a minute. What are you doing? No friends. We need both. That's what God is thirsting for. That's what he's seeking. You've come here today to unpacking the mass. Seeking something. But remember this. God has come here today seeking you. Seeking to bring you peace with him through his death on the cross through the water of life that he wants to pour out to you, as St. Paul said, poured out for us, that by grace, through faith, working in love, we can have that peace with God. There's no other way. You'll never find that peace on your own. You'll never be good enough. You'll never be holy enough, you'll never be smart enough. Apart from God, you can do nothing. But when Jesus has given you that water of life and you've tasted it and you've drunk from that living water and you have allowed that thirst to be satiated, then nothing else matters. Remember what Jesus said. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. That's God's promise to you, my friend. And when that's happened in your life, you can't help but tell everybody about it. Just like this woman runs back into town. Let me tell you all about a man who told me everything I did. And then they, of course, come to faith. The disciples are kind of clueless. They're still living in the world of physical stuff. Where'd you get food? Jesus, blah, blah. He's like, look, you guys, I got something going on here that you don't even know about. Friends, he's got something going on in your life that other people aren't going to know about either until you tell them, until you show them. And when you do, oh, my goodness, look what happened. They said, we believe. Not just because of what you said, because of what we've experienced. When you let the one who has quenched your thirst be made known to others, he'll do the same for them. Isn't it beautiful? My friends, you've come here today looking for something. Remember this too. God also has. And what he's come looking for is you. Will you allow yourself to quench his thirst? What he wants is your peace with him. And he's offered that to you. Will you receive? Will you take and drink? If you knew the one who was standing before you would say, give me that drink. Friends, Christ is standing before you. Will you ask Him? Because he's ready to give it to you. Oh, isn't it great? My friends, I pray that the Lord God would show each of us that whatever it is we've been chasing, whatever it is we've been thirsting for, is nothing compared to what he has given to us. May we receive it with joy. Thanks so much for watching unpacking the mass this week. Hey, if you've missed other episodes, need to get caught up. Right above me on one side or the other is a little card. Just click on that. It'll take you to the playlist where you can just watch the previous episodes here to get caught up. I encourage you to do that. And hey, if you haven't done so yet, please do me a favor and subscribe to this YouTube channel. Or if you're listening on a podcast, make sure you follow or like and man, a comment that or a rating would be just so appreciated to help us continue to get the word of unpacking the mass out to everyone else who also is thirsting. Thanks so much my friends. We'll see you next week. Take care and God bless.