- 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year A -

Homily by: Fr. Robin Koning, S.J.

"You must recognize how much you need only that which Jesus offers - living water." So our Elect, those preparing to be baptised at Easter, were charged before they heard the Gospel with us. In response, Gared, Nicole, Jean, Erika, Christina - that now familiar litany of future saints - each of them prayed the same prayer: "Lord, I thirst for living water." In effect, they were asking to be one with the woman at the well: to be one with her in her thirst for living water, to be one with her in her discovery of Jesus as the source of living water, to be one with her as she finds living water welling up within her and overflowing to others. After this homily, in the Rite for the First Scrutiny, we will ask God to bless these Elect with three things: a spirit of repentance, a sense of sin, and the true freedom of the children of God. This list reveals Ralph's fundamental union of mind and heart with Pope John Paul II. For the Holy Father, in his encyclical letter on Reconciliation, presents a similar list when he notes those things whose absence undermines the sacrament of reconciliation - "a lessening of a sense of sin, the distortion of the concept of repentance and the lack of effort to live an authentically Christian life." (Reconciliation and Penance #28) Let's look at each of these in the light of this Gospel, and particularly at the idea of a sense of sin, which can so easily be misunderstood.

There are at least three things which a sense of sin is not. Firstly, a proper sense of sin is not to be confused with a sense of shame, a sense of self-hatred. When we hear 'sense of sin', we can hear it as meaning another burden of guilt, another barrow load of manure the Church wants to pour over us, another thing to beat myself up with. Rather than seeing it as pointing to what I do, I can see it as a statement about who I am. So that when I hear that I need a stronger sense of sin, I can take this to mean that I'm not feeling bad enough about myself. This means that I am confusing it with shame, which extrapolates from the truth, "I made a mistake," to the lie, "I am a mistake." As long as I choose to remain ensconced in a sense of shame, then there is no hope for me. Since I believe I am a mistake, then any offer of forgiveness, any reconciliation, any experience of love, is not going to take hold for long. It will be poured into the bottomless pit of my shame and disappear into nothingness - for that's what my shame tells me - that I am a mistake, that I am nothing.

A sense of shame, of self-hatred, is a lie. As such, it is not from the God who is truth, but from the father of lies (Jn 8.44). God does not tell me that I am a mistake. Rather, at creation, God saw all that He had made and saw that, indeed, it was very good. And in Ephesians we read, "We are God's work of art." (Eph 2.10) Shame is a lie, and like any lie, it leads to cover-ups, to further lies which compound the shame. Remember King David and how he lusted after Bathsheba when he saw her bathing. He commits adultery with her, and then, when he finds she is pregnant, the shame sets in and the cover-up begins. He brings her husband, Uriah, back from battle and tries to get him to sleep with her. When this fails, he gets him drunk and again tries the same. Finally, to ensure the cover-up, he orders that Uriah be sent into the thickest part of the battle and then be cut loose from any support. And so it was. Thus it is that David, usually so honourable and showing such great integrity, allows his shame, his inability to admit that he has sinned, to lead him to murder.

A sense of shame is not a sense of sin. It is a lie. And however familiar or comfortable a place it may be for many of us, however much we may think it's where God wants us to be, to remain in our sense of shame is to remain in a lie. It is not to worship the Father, the living God, in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:23).

Some people go to the other extreme, avoiding any sense of sin by a sense of satisfaction. I do not mean that satisfaction which is genuine serenity, a gentle resting in a clear conscience and the reality that I am a loved sinner. Rather, I mean self-satisfaction, the sense of self-sufficiency of those people who feel that they do not need God but are able to cope on their own. This is the self-satisfaction of the Pharisee in the parable who proudly declares, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people." Not like those sinners who break the moral code. "Instead, I do all these good things," and he rattles off his check list. He pretends to be offering thanks, but it is not thanks for what God has made of him, but rather for what he himself has done. He pretends to be praying, but really speaks to himself, for he is the centre of his world. This self-satisfaction, self-righteousness, this sense of being a self-made person - this again, like its other extreme of self-hatred, leaves no room for a sense of sin.

The self-satisfaction of pride says I'm okay, and it's my doing. The self-hatred of shame says I'm not okay and it's my doing. There's a third refusal of a genuine sense of sin which says I'm not okay and it's someone else's doing. This is about self-justification. It's my family of origin issues; it's my society and its pressures; it's my cultural environment; it's my peer group. It's about self-pity. No one is looking after me; they've all ruined me. It is the man in John 5, laying ill by the healing pool for 38 years. He is unable to tell Jesus whether he wants to be made well, but just makes the same complaint he's probably been making for 38 years: "I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and someone else steps down ahead of me." Self-justification and self-pity. I have no real freedom. I am completely determined in my actions by my genes and/or my psychology and/or my environment and/or the people around me - anything but my own choices and decisions. No sense of sin. And so closing off the possibility of experiencing salvation.

Self-hatred, self-satisfaction, self-justification. These are all about self. They are not about a genuine sense of sin. For a genuine sense of sin is not at all self-focussed, as we easily imagine. It is God focussed. It is concerned with relationship - relationship with God, with other people, with myself, with creation. And with the ways in which I block these relationships. We cannot develop a sense of sin outside of a sense of a Saviour. If I do not trust that I have a Saviour, someone who loves me as I am, then I dare not face my sin. This we see in today's Gospel. As a Samaritan, the woman finds in Jesus, not the hostile rejection she usually experiences from the Jews who hate her people, but a tired, thirsty person, asking her for water - as vulnerable as God with us always is. As a public sinner within her own Samaritan community, the woman finds in Jesus, not the usual cold shoulder treatment, or the whispered gossip, but someone engaging her in conversation, treating her like a person, as someone who is more than her sins. In this way, Jesus is able to elicit from her her thirst for God. He whets her appetite for more - for real freedom, for living water. She asks for the living water that Jesus has spoken about, just as you, the Elect have asked for it today. But before she can receive it, she needs to face what is blocking it, which is her sin. And now, only now, is she ready to face it. Only now, having experienced the respect and love which Jesus has shown her, can she face the concrete particularities of her sinfulness. Only now, having been treated by Jesus as a person, as someone who is more than her sins, only now can she face her sins honestly. "Go, call your husband." "I have no husband." Still tentative, still not the whole truth - but Jesus gently leads her to face the full truth before him, acknowledging the truth of what she says and revealing the full truth so that it can be healed and she can worship in spirit and in truth. "You are right … for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"

Our sense of sin and sense of a Saviour need to go hand in hand. I cannot truly know my sin except in the light of God's mercy. The self-pitying person - I'm not okay and it's someone else's doing - has no need of repentance. It is others who need changing. The self-satisfied person - I'm okay and it's my doing - has no need of repentance. All is perfect. The self-hating person - I'm not okay and it's my doing - has no need of repentance. For, being irredeemably flawed, it can do them no good. The sinner says, "I'm okay, and it's God's doing." They know they need repentance, need to turn again to the Saviour through whom they were created in God's image and who wishes to restore them to that image.

So we understand two of the things we will ask for our Elect in a moment: a sense of sin and a spirit of repentance. The fruit of these two gifts is the third gift we pray for, the true freedom of the children of God. This is certainly a freedom from - freedom from self - self-hatred, self-satisfaction, self-pity. That would be gift enough from the hands of our Saviour. But God always offers infinitely more than we could ask or imagine. The deeper freedom is freedom for, and in the Gospel we see the woman receiving this freedom. Freedom for others, freedom for service. She goes back home, the first Apostle of the Samaritans: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done." Her testimony is based on her liberating experience of a sense of sin - facing everything she had ever done. And many came to believe because of her testimony. Having met Jesus, offering living water; having been freed of what blocked the flow of living water within her, the woman experienced this living water welling up within her - a source of life for herself, and, miracle of miracles, for many others also. That this may be the experience of the Elect, and of all of us, we pray, Lord, give us living water. Amen.