Lent: A time of sacrifice, renewal, healing

	Word to Life  Jeff Hedglen

I was 26 years old when my mother died after a two-year battle with cancer. This event in my young life was traumatic, to say the least, but it was not marked with tears.

This surprised me. When she was diagnosed, I was sad but did not cry; I chalked that up to hoping for the best. I figured I would cry if things got worse.

In time, things got worse, and still I did not cry. This time I brushed it off saying I would cry at the funeral. The funeral came and went and still no tears flowed.

February 24, 2008 Third Sunday of Lent Exodus 17:3-7 Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9 Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 John 4:5-42 or 5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Though I was young and a man, I figured it was okay to cry at my mother's funeral, and the fact that I did not, caused me to worry. I sought help from a counselor.

My time in counseling was the second most important event in my life besides my conversion to Jesus. For in my time in counseling I discovered that my emotions had been buried. Week after week they were slowly excavated, and what was soon a more whole me was revealed, a person who was a more whole Jeff, a Jeff with a shelf full of wide-ranging emotions, not just humor and anger.

Lent is a time of discovery, renewal, sacrifice, sorrow, and most of all healing. Healing waters await the catechumenate at the Easter Vigil, and the waters of our baptism continue to penetrate our lives, gradually weathering away all the sin that covers our true selves.

It is such a moment like this that finds Jesus at Jacob's well giving living water to the Samaritan woman.

True to form, Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter and reaches into the deepest recesses of the woman, revealing past hurt and the effects that linger still. Instead of condemnation, Jesus offers healing. Instead of death, he offers life in the form of living water.

	For reflection: • What have your encounters with Jesus revealed about you? • How has the living water of Jesus quenched your thirst?

Through the counselor, Jesus told me everything I needed to hear, and this gave birth to a well of tears, living water that still flows today.

Yet I know Jesus has more for me. So, I stand next to the woman at the well saying "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty."

This column is offered in cooperation with the North Texas Catholic of Fort Worth, Texas.