From Lent to Easter

To me, Lent is critical to the full appreciation of Easter. You can't arrive at the destination unless you walk the road that takes you there.

This past Sunday, the congregation got a first listen to a track from the CD, "The Woman At the Well." It is basically Father Joe reading the story from the Gospel of John where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar. We opened with that, and close the CD with Fr. Joe reading from Jesus' walk to Emmaus.

It was important to do it this way. We have to hear Jesus explain, as he did repeatedly, what his sacrifice is going to mean, before people know of the sacrifice itself. When you give somebody a gift, don't you hide the price tag?

Jesus speaks of living water at the well, a water that quenches all thirst. It is important for those who come to the water to know what the water does. If they know the price paid for that water, maybe some would recoil in horror. Maybe some would say, as Peter did, "Never shall you wash my feet, Lord," ashamed at the price Jesus pays to bring us the water.

But the point is not to recoil in horror: it is to appreciate what the water is.

Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. 

(John 4:14.)