Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent: Daily Lenten Meditations

IF YOU KNEW 

The way had been long and the Master was weary. When they reached the well the others went into the village to purchase food for the evening meal while Jesus sat on the well-curb to rest. A woman came to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink from the well—He a Jew, she a Samaritan. It was an unheard-of thing and she expressed her astonishment. “If you knew the gift of God,” the Master replied, “and who He is that says to you: Give Me to drink, you perhaps would have asked of Him and He would have given you living water.” The implication was of her deplorable ignorance with the consequent privation of an immense good.

“If you knew the gift of God.” Some day life for me will be almost over—life with its wondrous opportunities. Eternity, vast, unchangeable, will be closing in upon me. In a few brief moments my everlasting destiny shall be irrevocably fixed.

I wonder if in that solemn hour I shall hear ringing in my ear the voice of my Divine Friend: “If you knew the gift of God.” If you knew the gift of God that lay in the trials and sufferings of life from which you shrank so impatiently! If you knew the gift of God hidden in the humble duties of your prosaic life, in the weariness, the loneliness, the monotony of it all! If you knew the gift of God in the voice of conscience urging you to repentance, in the whispered inspiration of grace, in the wonderful Sacraments—if you knew, think what you might be now: a saint of God . . . but now it is too late!

Dear Jesus, Divine Friend, have mercy on us. 

EPISTLE AND GOSPEL: Taken from the Angelus Press 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal

EPISTLE: Is. 49:8-15

The Prophet Isaias sees hastening from all sides the Christian people who are waiting with holy impatience for the Easter Feast, when at last their souls may quench their thirst in the springs of grace through the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance.

Thus saith the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped thee: and I have preserved thee, and given thee to be a covenant of the people, that thou mightest raise up the earth and possess the inheritances that were destroyed: that thou mightest say to them that are bound: Come forth: and to them that are in darkness: Show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be every plain. They shall not hunger, nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor the sun strike them: for He that is merciful to them shall be their shepherd, and at the fountains of waters He shall give them drink. And I will make all My mountains away, and My paths shall be exalted. Behold these shall come from afar, and behold these from the north and from the sea, and these from the south country. Give praise, O ye heavens, and rejoice, O earth; ye mountains, give praise with jubilation: because the Lord hath comforted His people, and will have mercy on His poor ones. And Sion said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee, saith the Lord almighty.

GOSPEL:  Jn. 8:12-20

To those who are in darkness Jesus gives light, for He is “the light of the world, and he who followeth Him, walketh not in darkness, but in the light of life.” Let us ask Christ to fill our minds and our hearts with the light of His grace.

At that time Jesus spoke to the mul-titudes of the Jews, saying: I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Pharisees therefore said to Him: Thou givest testimony of Thyself: Thy testimony is not true. Jesus answered and said to them: Although I give testimony of Myself, My testimony is true: for I know whence I came and whither I go: but you know not whence I come or whither I go. You judge according to the flesh: I judge not any man: and if I do judge, My judgment is true, because I am not alone: but I and the Father that sent Me. And in your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that give testi-mony of Myself: and the Father that sent Me giveth testimony of Me. They said therefore to Him: Where is Thy Father? Jesus answered: Neither Me do you know, nor My Father: if you did know Me, perhaps you would know My Father also. These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple: and no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come.