This Sunday’s gospel invites us to stop and consider where and how we are blind, wilfully or inadvertently, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. It also reminds us how Jesus insists that our role as Christians is to reveal God’s goodness, love mercy and compassion to the world by the way we live. Do we dare illuminate our world by letting our light shine?

Today’s gospel story of the encounter at a village well between Jesus and a Samaritan woman is one that has been repeated in a multitude of different ways in every known culture. It resonates in the mind and heart of every decent person who has even an ounce of compassion, tolerance and open-heartedness. We have all experienced people who are obsessed with passing on to the younger generation the bitterness of family feuds or fanning the flame of prejudice that divides communities and even keeps different racial and religious groups apart.

On the mount of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John were given an extraordinary and unforgettable experience on which they were meant to rely when it later seemed that all that Jesus had been for them was being demolished and obliterated before their very eyes, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald.. They were given a parachute of living hope, an assurance that God’s beloved Son, the one to whom they were urged to listen, and his followers would never be abandoned. Today’s readings is a reminder to get busy packing parachutes and blessing those who have packed ours.

The world in which we live rewards us for what we achieve, how we perform in public, how successful we are in our careers, how wealthy we are. Yet, whatever our status, whatever we produce or whatever we earn, we know that we can be driven by our urges for power, independence, status and possessions. Lent is a time to look into the mirror of our lives, to decide whether we are choosing what our world rewards or what God asks of us, writes Br Julian McDonald CFC.

The life God has given us is too short and too precious to waste on anything less than love and forgiveness. True, there will always be in our lives people who have little appeal to us, people we can’t stand, those we would rather ignore. But to convince ourselves that we can do nothing to bridge the gap between us just won’t wash as far as Jesus is concerned. And there are better things to do than to waste time and energy on hating, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald.