How an Encounter with Jesus Can Change Your Life Forever-A Beautiful Reflection on this Sunday’s Gospel by Bishop Robert Gruss

Get all of Bishop Gruss' Lenten writings/recordings including overcoming temptations, growing in our capacity to love, the meaning of Lent & more.The Gospel of this 3rd Sunday of Lent is very familiar to most of us. This story of the “Woman at the Well” only appears in John’s Gospel.It is beautiful story of redemption. Redemption – isn’t this what the season of Lent is all about?Can you imagine doing something so ordinary as fetching water at a well and having it change your life forever?Encounter with JesusLet’s take a look at this encounter with Jesus. It is not meant to be just a nice story, but Jesus is speaking to us through it.  There is a lot of symbolism. The main character is a sinful, disreputable Samaritan woman.She can be seen as a symbol of all of humanity......someone who would spend her life pursuing her own appetites and desires.She is a Samaritan....already an outcast of the Jewish society.  She finds herself at this well at midday.....highly unusual...because the well was a meeting place for women.  Possibly everyone knew about her living arrangements – living with someone to whom she was not married.LonelinessBeing alone at the well symbolically represented her own loneliness; her own questioning about what life was all about.  She was looking for a life of value and meaning, yet she couldn’t break away from her past.She was blinded by her own sinfulness.  And she finds herself at the well with Jesus........a man who acknowledged her in a new way........a man who would go against the norms of Jewish law.Encountering Jesus for the First TimeAs she encountered Jesus for the first time, at this unexpected place, and listened to him and even questioned him, her hardened heart began to soften......and her deepest thirst began to surface. In this encounter, as this Samaritan woman came face to face with the loving gaze of Jesus, she also came face to face with her own sin.  She had her first real Christian experience.  Our Christian experience will often begin with a humiliating wave of self-disgust.  It usually happens that the last thing a person sees is himself/herself.  And it often happens that the first thing Christ does for us is to compel us to do what we have spent our life refusing to do – look at ourselves.Christ's Power to See Into the Depths of the Human HeartThe Samaritan woman was staggered by Christ's ability to see into her inmost being. She was amazed at his intimate knowledge of the human heart, and of her heart in particular.  It is his power to see into...