March 8, 2026
III Sunday of Lent
Fr. Renato Russo
Dear brothers and sisters, may the Lord give you peace.
I am Fr. Renato Russo, a Friar Minor of the Province of Assisi, residing at the Convent of Monteripido in Perugia, but currently serving the Custody of the Holy Land at the parish of St. Catherine in Limassol, on the island of Cyprus.
The Gospel of this III Sunday of Lent presents us with a meeting and dialogue between Jesus, tired and weary, sitting alone by a well around noon, and a woman no longer young, who comes from the nearby city of Shechem in Samaria to draw water from that well. Jesus speaks to her, "Give me a drink". The woman’s surprise is great, but from this "material" request, water, a dialogue and catechesis begins that leads this woman to recognize in Jesus, first the Messiah and then the Savior of the world.
I invite each one of you to personally meditate on the gradual "steps" of this beautiful dialogue, I will briefly pause on this word that Jesus addresses to the woman, and today also addresses to you, to each one of us, "whoever drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever".
You see, we are very often searching, even anxiously, for the realization of ourselves, for what may satisfy our thirst for happiness, we anxiously chase success, prestige, we place our trust in money, in influential friendships, in the goods of this world, which in the end, we have experienced it, come to an end and often betray expectations. "My people have committed two evils, says the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah, they have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, to dig for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns that hold no water" (Jer 2,13). Jesus offers Himself to that woman, to each one of us, as water capable of satisfying forever our thirst for eternity, "will never be thirsty forever". The things, the goods of this world serve us, they are useful, but our heart is greater and is made to be satisfied with God. "You have made us for yourself, Lord, said St. Augustine, and our heart is restless until it rests in You".
Let us seek the Lord in this time of Lent and He will offer Himself to us, and then it will be Easter of resurrection, of new life.
