"Ancient Wells:" The Third Sunday of Lent

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent
(Third draft)

Not far from the farm where I grew up
was the stagnant water and over-grown tow path
of what remains of the Miami-Erie Canal,
a once-heavily traveled waterway
connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River.

Here in Cincinnati,
the Miami-Canal inspired the name of the neighborhood
we all know as Over-the-Rhine.
The path of the canal eventually became the roadbed
of Central Parkway.

Anyway as a boy, I used to ride my bike down to the canal quite often.
It was great hide-away,
as dark and a mysterious as a Louisiana bayou.

I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the canal.

In my mother’s day,
gypsies used to travel the abandoned waterway
and camp in the meadows along its banks.

My grandmother occasionally mentioned
the ruins of a hotel
that once served the immigrants
who came up the canal from Cincinnati
to carve out farms from the deep forests that once
covered all the land.

These stories always fascinated me.

One summer I spent most of my free time
looking for the remnants of that hotel.
Late one Sunday afternoon,
some friends and I finally came across
some foundation stones.
We located what we thought was probably the entrance and then,
about fifty yards away, hidden in a thicket of brambles and locust trees,
we found the well.

It was an amazing discovery.
The chiseled stones were dry-stacked
in a perfect-fit pattern that had not slipped out of place
for over a hundred years.
And the walls of the well
were as straight as a plumb line.

Obviously, the immigrants knew how to construct a good well.
And it is a good thing that they did
because, back then, traveling people needed a reliable source of water
to slake their thirst
to cook their meals
and refresh their livestock.

They brought with them skills for locating water
and tools for digging the wells.

But that is only part of what they brought with them.
They also brought their faith.
For as soon as trees were cleared
and fields were plowed,
they went about building churches
and in those churches another type of well was dug,
deep wells of grace that we refer to as baptismal fonts.

Every church has one.

Traveling people, as I said, need a reliable source of water.
And travelers on the way to heaven
require a reliable source of grace.

And that’s what today’s gospel is all about.

Today’s gospel passage recalls a conversation at the Well of Jacob.
where Jesus engages in conversation
a woman who is thirsting for
for healing, forgiveness, restoration and meaning in her life.

He says to her,
“The water that I provide will be a spring of water
gushing up to eternal life.”

* * *

Now, we’ve heard this story many times.
We hear it each year as we draw near the midpoint of Lent.
We listen to it in anticipation of the baptisms
to be celebrated at Easter.

As most of you here know, here at St. Al’s we have 18 individuals
preparing for either Baptism or reception into the Church at Easter.

Like the woman in today’s gospel,
like all of us who worship Christ here at St. Al’s,
they come to this place looking for deep wells of faith
from which to draw life-giving water.

So, what is it about the Catholic faith that draws them here to St. Al’s?
Indeed, what is it that draws you and me to this place of worship week after week?

Whatever it is, it has to do with Christ
and the grace that springs up here in a fountain of worship;
whatever it is that draws us here has to do with Christ…
and the deep wells called Sacraments
though which Christ provides us with the promise and hope of heaven.

* * *
Where do you finds signs of that kind of hope and promise?

I’ll tell you where I find it.

I find it in the eyes of young parents
as they see grace flowing like water
over the soft skin of their babies on the day of their baptisms.

But that’s not the only place I find it.

I also see it on the faces of people who come dragging into church
tired from working overtime and worn down by the stress of raising a family…

I see it as these folks come there to offer to God
their tired-to-the-bone days and their nights of not-enough-sleep.
I see them offering their daily labor and their daily love
and joining it to the offering of Christ.

And this is an amazing thing to see
because it is this offering here at this sacrifice of the Mass
that makes all their personal sacrifices make sense.

Because here, at Mass, we know that our live and our toil are worth a lot,
we offer work to God because we know that God values the work that we do
and will—somehow, someday--make something of it
that will last a lot longer than a stone well…
God will make of our work and the labor of our love
something will last forever!
* * *
So, what brings you here to Mass?

Is it the welcome you receive at the door?
The friends with whom you visit after Mass?

Is it the gentle touch of the sacred Bread
that becomes for us the Body of Christ?

Or is it something more?

Might be that a conversation takes place
in some deep part of your soul
at some point during the Mass
when the Lord speaks to words of healing
as he did for the woman at the well?

Might it be that at some point
in the holy celebration of the sacred sacraments
Christ himself drops a bucket down the shaft
then hands you a ladle of forgiveness
offers you a cup running over with friendship
shoves into your arms a canteen of mercy…
something we experience as complete and total acceptance?

If you ask me, these are just a few of the things that he draws up
from the stone cisterns and deep sacraments of the Church.

“I give to you water that gushes up
to eternal life,” says the Lord.

This—and nothing less—is what transpires here at the liturgy.

So, pray this morning
that your heart and the heart of everyone here today
will be open to the grace that is offered here in this place…

pray that we all will be open to receive the water that sparkles with promise,
the promise of a life brimming with grace,
a life rippling with love…
a life in which the words of Christ echo deep in our souls…

like a voice echoing down the sturdy shafts of those ancient wells
called the Sacraments of the Church.