Contemplation

The world becoming luminous
from within
as one plunges
breathlessly
into human activity

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Samaritan Woman

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

 ¹The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, ²although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

 ⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
 ⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
 ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])
 ¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
 ¹¹"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
 ¹³Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
 ¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water
so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.
 ²⁵The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."²⁶Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he.²⁷Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"⁸Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" ³⁰They came out of the town and made their way toward him.  Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world."

The Wisdom of Julian of Norwich

“God rejoices that he is our Father, and God rejoices that he is our Mother, and God rejoices that he is our true spouse, and that our soul is his beloved wife. And Christ rejoices that he is our brother; and Jesus rejoices that he is our saviour”

John Michael Talbot - 'Only in God'

My Heart is Ready

My heart is ready, Yes! My heart is ready!

like a desert I am parched. My soul of sand

soaking up the rain at once is dry again, and

the inner fount of life is rank and deadly.

In such abysmal straits, remind the self

that we are loved, for all our self-despair;

that Jesus Christ has sought us out, that care

will open up the inner streams of health.

God’s love is real and God’s affection never spent.

So, be watered, tended; be refreshed, this Lent.

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims1 sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. 2 Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Celebration

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities

or in the country gather together to one place, and

the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the

prophets are read, as long as time permits; then,

when the reader has ceased, the president verbally

instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as

we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the assent, saying Amen;”

 ...Justin Martyr