3rd Sunday of Lent, Cycle A
EXODUS 17:3-7
In those days, the people, tortured by thirst, murmured against Moses:
– Have you brought us out of Egypt to make us die of thirst, us, our children, and our livestock?
Moses cried out to the Lord and said:
– What can I do with this people? They are ready to stone me.
The Lord answered Moses:
– Present yourself to the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel; also take in your hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I will be there before you, on the rock at Horeb; you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.
Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he named that place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarrel of the children of Israel and because they had tested the Lord, saying:
– Is the Lord among us or not?
This passage is one of several in which the people of Israel, wandering in the desert, find themselves without water and protest violently against Moses, longing for the land of slavery, Egypt.
Moses turns to the Lord, and brings forth water from the rock for the people. But the deeper meaning is given in the last sentence. Israel asks, “Is the Lord among us or not?”, which is the fundamental question of a person of Faith, who has trusted in God but is always tempted to abandon the path.
ROMANS 5:1-2 and 5-8
Since we have been justified by faith, we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have obtained access by faith to this grace in which we stand.
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly – indeed, one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one might dare to die -; but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The message of this complex text, like all of Paul’s, is clear: the hope of the children of God is founded on Jesus, on the death of Jesus, the proof that God loves us.
The relationship of God with humans is love: this is shown in Jesus.
The Spirit makes Jesus the presence of God’s love, capable of going even unto death. And this is the foundation of our hope.
If the first text ended by asking “Is the Lord among us or not?”, Paul sees the answer in Jesus, in whom we see the presence of God among us.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.