VOICES of Lent - Part Six

We continue with this series of postings entitled, VOICES of Lent. I have structured these models, for your personal prayer, in the form of a dialogue between the Soul and the Guiding Spirit. The scripture texts are taken from the gospels for the Sundays of Lent, year A, year of the Scrutinies. Our focus is discerning voices.

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Soul: Good Spirit, who will be able to avoid falling from grace?

Good Spirit: No person is capable of matching wits with the Deceiver. Remember who he is, this is Lucifer, once the brightest, most glorious of all the angels in heaven, until his own pride consumed him, and he was expelled from God's presence. Taking with him many other angels, his purpose now is to destroy every human soul on earth, dragging them down into his darkness and despair. There is but one hope, to hear the Voice of Mercy calling. Mercy alone can lead you through the labyrinth of deceits into the light of truth. 

Soul: How does one recognize the Voice of Mercy?

Good Spirit: You begin by seeing and hearing how others first heard the Voice of  Mercy. Listen carefully to the conversation you hear in the following gospel passage.

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,

near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her,
“Give me a drink.”
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—
Jesus answered and said to her,
“If you knew the gift of God
and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘
you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep;
where then can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself
with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her,
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Good Spirit: Let us together listen to the Voice of Mercy, which is the voice of Jesus.

Consider:

• ... how it is noon, the hottest time of the day, no one comes to draw and carry water in such heat. Think of how deeply the taunts of the women of the village wound the Samaritan woman. Bound by guilt, she has only the choosing between which pain to suffer.   
• ... that even though she has a bucket with which she can draw water, her thirst for compassion and love seems never be satisfied.
• ... how she is surprised to find another person willing to suffer the same oppressive conditions she must bear ... that he speaks to her first ... that a gentle, none judgmental voice is seeking a simple act of mercy from her.
• ... the words of Jesus, "if you only knew" ... how Mercy has already set out a plan to seek after you, in the condition you are in, even before you know it.
• ... if you are willing to surrender even a single cup of your self-willed determination to Him who is thirsting for a place in your heart ... do you hear his voice calling, "Give me a drink"?

................................. footnotes ......................................

As the deer longs for streams of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God.

When can I enter and see the face of God?^*

My tears have been my bread day and night,

as they ask me every day, “Where is your God?”

Those times I recall

as I pour out my soul,

When I would cross over to the shrine of the Mighty One,

to the house of God,

Amid loud cries of thanksgiving,

with the multitude keeping festival.

Why are you downcast, my soul;

why do you groan within me?

Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,

my savior and my God.

  

By day may the LORD send his mercy,

and by night may his righteousness be with me!

I will pray to the God of my life,

I will say to God, my rock:

“Why do you forget me?

Why must I go about mourning

with the enemy oppressing me?”

It shatters my bones, when my adversaries reproach me,

when they say to me every day: “Where is your God?”

Why are you downcast, my soul,

why do you groan within me?

Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,

my savior and my God.

 Psalm 42