3rd Sunday of Lent

Another week gone. Time really flies, doesn't it? Managed to finish another paper yesterday. Really exhausted now. I decided to cook rice yesterday with chinese mushrooms and sausages you guys brought. Hhhmmmmm delicious. It feels so good to have warm rice in your tummy.

Received a call from Fr Dobromir, my former superior and now treasurer of the Custody. He asked me to guide a group of Bulgarian members of parliament tomorrow and the next day. I spoke with Fr Niccacci immediately since the dean is in Rome at the moment. He said it's a service to the Custody so i should do it. OK so I spoke to the superior and he said ok too. that means I'll be out for the next 2 days. Will be off the blog.

The Samaritan woman by the well is the subject of this Sunday's gospel reading. Lots of people say she's a prostitute because she comes to collect water at noon - something they allege no one does because it's too hot; women would usually collect water in the mornings when its cooler; and because the Samaritan was allegedly a prostitute and unclean, she could not mix with these other women. Well, let's consider another possibility. Let's say you used up all your water that morning (maybe some friends came and you need more water, cf. the importune man who's friend arrived in the night and he had no bread so he had to knock on his neighbour's door to borrow bread), well whether you're a sinner or not, you'll have no choice but to go out to the well and get more water, in the heat of noon In this view, it is out of need, out of urgency that you go out and do this fastidious chore. Makes me think of Jesus saying "If you give to these the least a cup of water in my name..." Getting a cup of water back then was not just turning on a tap; if you ran out of water in the jar, you had to go all the way out to the well to draw water - in otherwords, you go to all the trouble just for one person, and the least among people at that. So I'd like to think of the Samaritan woman not as a sinner but someone who was in urgent need of water and thus had to go to the well in the heat of the day. That's comforting for me because then when we're in dire straits, terrible crisis or urgent need, we do our best to alleviate the problem, go to all the trouble to try and fix it; and there Jesus is waiting for us to give us the solution, to re-orientate our priorities and see things clearly. If the Samaritan woman did not go to the well, she would never have met Jesus at all. So God helps those who help themselves.