March 8, 2026 – Third Sunday of Lent

+ From the Gospel according to John (4:5-42)

At that time, 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 beside the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says 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 have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water that I shall give him 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 will never thirst or have to keep coming here to draw water.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; what you said is true.”
The woman answered him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet! Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people must worship.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such are the kinds of worship the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman answered him, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
At that moment his disciples returned and were amazed that he was talking with the woman. Yet no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “What are you speaking with her about?” The woman then left her water jar, went back to the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Christ?” They left the city and were going to him.
Meanwhile, his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.” But he answered them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” And the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months, then comes the harvest’? Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields; they are already white for harvest. The reaper is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. For here the proverb holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.'” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
Many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” And when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more believed because of his own word, and they said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

The word of the Lord.