Third Sunday of Lent
Massimo Palombella
Today’s Gospel (Jn 4:5-42) narrates Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman that took place in a town called Sicar.
It is interesting to note, among other things, that there are different levels within the dialogue between the two interlocutors, Jesus and the woman. The woman does not grasp the challenges of Jesus – who at one point reveals himself as the Messiah – and continues to reason and respond about concrete, punctual, ‘banal’ things, just as the disciples do in relation to eating and food.
It can also happen to us that we fail to grasp the profound challenges that the Lord puts before us and we continue to live in that existential laziness generated fundamentally by fear of facing the truth, of going where we perceive ourselves to be weak, of letting reality touch our lives.
The Lord awaits us beyond our defences, our fears. He awaits us in our interiority where we can slowly find that living water which alone can give order, fills and heals our life.
The Gradual of today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 9 (Ps 9:20, 4) with the following text:
“Exsurge Domine, non praevaleat homo:
iudicentur gentes in conspectu tuo.
In convertendo inimicum meum retrorsum,
infirmabuntur, et peribunt a facie tua.”
(Arise, 0 Lord, let not man prevail;
let the gentiles be judged in your presence.
When my enemies are turned back in defeat,
they shall lose strength and perish before your face).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Gradual Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The interpretation can be found on YouTube where there are no indications.
It may be interesting to note that the Ambrosian Rite, in Lent, has a Sunday – the second – called ‘Samaritan Sunday’. There are two antiphons in the Ambrosian Chant, the Confractorium (at the breaking of the bread, which, unlike the Roman Rite, occurs immediately after the Doxology, before the Our Father) and the Transitorium (analogous to the Communion antiphon of the Roman Rite) with the specific theme of the Gospel of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. They are “Dicit Dominus ad Samaritanæ” and “Si scires quod esset donum Dei“.
As far as the Ambrosian Rite is concerned, the attached music, in Ambrosian Chant, is taken from the Antiphonale Missarum Iuxta Ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis, published in Rome in 1935.
The interpretation is by the Cappella Musicale del Duomo di Milano at the Celebration on the Second Sunday of Lent on 5 March 2023.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
