What a gift this past week has been. Our Lenten Mission, Untying Your Knots: Return to Joy, exceeded every hope. Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS, brought his singular grace to our community—artist, brother, storyteller, spiritual guide—and something genuinely holy happened among us. His sessions were luminous: funny, tender, theologically rich, and full of the kind of invitation that reaches past the mind and settles into the heart.
And then there is the mural! On the opening wall of our Parish Center, something beautiful now lives. Parishioners and students of all ages picked up brushes and contributed their hands to a work of communal art. The words at its center say everything: Love gathers us. Joy sends us. That is not just a caption. That is a theology. That is what we are called to be as a parish.
Brother Mickey has a rare gift for helping ordinary people discover that they are already artists, already carriers of the sacred. He reminded us that creativity is the image of God alive in each of us—the imago Dei expressed in color and form and the joy of making something together. All are welcome to come see the mural, which now greets everyone who enters our Parish Center. Thank you, Mickey. You have left your mark on us in more ways than one.
If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Those words from this Sunday’s responsorial psalm echo everything our mission stirred in us. They also frame the sacred rite we celebrate at this Mass: the First Scrutiny for our brothers and sisters in the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults (OCIA), who are preparing to receive the sacraments of initiation at Easter.
The Scrutinies are not tests. They are prayers. The Church surrounds our elect and asks God to search their hearts, heal what is wounded, and strengthen what is holy. God examines us the way a skilled healer examines a patient—to find what needs to be made whole. For those of you in OCIA: what you are doing takes real courage. You have said yes to a process of conversion that is rarely neat or tidy, and you have allowed this community to walk with you. Today, the whole Church prays over you with great tenderness and we invite our parishioners to pick up a blank card from the Church entrances and write a note of encouragement, welcome or prayer for our OCIA elect and candidates.
In the first reading, Moses stands in the desert with a thirsty and angry people. With the raw honesty the Bible celebrates in its greatest figures, he brings their frustration directly to God: “What shall I do with these people?” God responds with presence and instruction. Strike the rock—I will be there—water will flow. And it does. Life from the hardest, driest place.
The psalm refrain keeps returning: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” The danger in the desert is the hardening—the closing off, the decision to stop listening because the journey has been too long. The Israelites at Massah and Meribah asked, “Is the Lord here with us or not?” We know that question. We have asked it ourselves.
The Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel—Photini, “the enlightened one” as the Eastern Church calls her—might have asked the same question, and answered it by going to the well. She comes at noon, alone. She does not harden her heart when a Jewish man speaks to her, crossing every boundary of culture and custom. She engages, questions, and brings her whole searching self to the conversation. Jesus meets her exactly there, beginning not with her failures but with his own thirst: “Give me a drink.”
The encounter that follows is extraordinary: genuine searching, theological depth, growing revelation. She is a seeker, and Jesus recognizes her as precisely the kind of person the Father is seeking—those who worship in Spirit and in truth. She did not harden her heart. She stayed with the conversation, followed it deeper, and then ran to tell her village: “Come see a man who told me everything I have done.” That is not shame speaking. That is wonder. That is metanoia—the complete turning of a life toward light.
The mural on our Parish Center wall and the encounter at the well tell the same story. Love gathers us. Joy sends us. Photini was gathered at the well and sent to her village. Our elect are being gathered into this community and will one day be sent from it. Our Lenten theme—Return to Joy: Untying the Knots of Life—is the invitation to stay at the well long enough to receive something you did not expect.
To our OCIA elect: you are Photini at the well. You have kept showing up, asked the real questions, and not hardened your hearts. Today the whole Church prays that the Lord will deepen the good work already begun in you and fill you with water that will never run dry.
And for all of us: if today you hear his voice—at the well, before the mural, in this very pew—let your heart stay open. Next Saturday at 10AM, bring your open hearts and join Fr. Dat and the Eucharistic Adoration group for a morning presentation with music, prayer, and adoration followed by a light lunch. Please RSVP for lunch here. On Saturday evening after Mas, Tina and her amazing team, host the St. Patrick’s Day dinner in the Parish Center. Buy tickets here.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan
