Have you even taken a moment to reflect on the many things in life we take for granted as human beings? We have built into us an astonishing, even miraculous, range of abilities and skills. Other species in the created world have only part of what we are able to do. We are the only species on our planet, and as far as we know the cosmos, with our level of consciousness. The potential of our abilities seems to expand exponentially, they can put someone on the moon, but there is a shadow side which can take us to the verge of annihilation. When we at our best the greatness of humanity and its gifts is a reflection of the wonder and greatness of God, at our worst we imitate the devil. One of our amazing abilities that many of us have is sight. Think about it for a moment, most of us see in colour, we see in three dimensions, our eyesight adapts to light or dark. The eye itself is an extraordinary construction directly connected to our even more incredible brain. We feel uncomfortable when our sight deteriorates. For those with sight we find the prospect of blindness terrifying. Some of us of us are born without sight as the man in this Sunday's gospel. At the time of Jesus any type of disability was the result of sin on the part of the person, the parents and even ancestors. Jewish law promoted the welfare of widows and orphans but because of the idea of sin, not disabled people. Disability was a punishment meted out by God. Appalling really. Just before Sunday’s reading Jesus tells His followers that this is not true. Jesus’ response is not to start speculating about rights or wrongs but of helping a person in need, in this case a person who is not asking for help but who Jesus just notices. There’s only one problem with this, it’s the Jewish Sabbath. In Jesus’ time the Sabbath was strictly observed. There were, and are, 39 forms of work which are forbidden on the Sabbath in Judaism. Healing was one, as was kneading, which is how Jesus creates the paste. Jesus as an observant Jew would have known this. Perhaps it’s not that He does not care about the Sabbath but he wants to help, to give a gift to someone in need that will transform their lives; the gift of sight, not just of the eyes but also to open the eyes of the heart. We see how the man receives his sight but also receives the gift of faith. As his sight returns his understanding of Jesus develops too from “he”, to “prophet” to “Lord” to the worship of God in the person of Jesus. For the Pharisees, in a sense they just blunder around in their interior darkness. They just see rules being broken and they cannot make up their mind what is going on. This is surprising as they would have known that opening the eyes of the blind was, in scripture, a sign of the dawn of the age of the Messiah and the coming of the kingdom of God. Their blindness is their confusion, but their blindness is not particularly terrifying to them, the more they debate the more blind they become. They are ok with generating a lot of heat but no light. Where are your blind spots (we all have them)? There are times in our lives when we sit and wait for the Saviour. Times of doubt, times of illness, times of anxiety, times of rejection, times when we do not know where to turn? In our hearts there are times when we sit and wait for Jesus and, in our souls, beg for his presence. There is no need to beg, as with the man today Jesus notices us and, more than this, He looks for us. He always wants to heal us, He wants to shelter our battered and bruised heart in His. Lent is a sacred time to come to Him, particularly in the sacrament of reconciliation, to receive the beauty of His healing grace, where we too can say “Lord, I believe”. Whatever happens in our lives we are always in the light of the Lord. I hope and pray that Lent is going well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris

Most of us have had times in our lives when we feel or experience a sense of alienation or distance from others. Perhaps times when we don’t feel part of the communities in which we live. It can be at any age, at home, school or work. Times perhaps when we sense that others do not approve of us, times when we avoid others because of what we may have done. Perhaps there has never been a time when we have not either been judged by others or when we judge those around us, which, God help us, we all do. We see something of this in Sunday's gospel. Jesus is taking a journey, most likely on foot that would have taken Him a number of days. Interestingly He is in Samaritan country. There were centuries of animosity, even hatred, between Jews and Samaritans, for example each considered the other as being heretical in their concept and worship of God; interestingly however both believed in the coming of a Messiah. Why is Jesus in hostile territory? In any case He sits at a well, which is still there and is about 100 foot deep, it is midday and He is thirsty. A woman comes to the well and He asks her for a drink. In Jesus’ time men did not normally speak to women in public. Jews certainly did not speak to Samaritans. The woman is there at the height of the heat of the day. Women would normally come to wells in the cool of the morning not noon. Perhaps she was not welcome to be with other women because, we learn later, of her bad reputation. Maybe the other women did not want to be seen with a woman “like her”; perhaps she knew that if she were there with others she would be judged, harassed and bullied. It is hard to understand the level of stigma she carried due to her being a Samaritan and by the events of her life in the society in which she lived. And yet she is a thoughtful even compelling person and not without spirit. You get a sense that she is one of those people who despite being looked down on and even despised by others, she had seen and experienced a lot and that she still had some dignity intact, the dignity of a human being given to each and every one of us by God himself. During the course of her dialogue with this stranger she moves from curiosity to belief, and then to evangelisation (from the Greek evangelion meaning "glad tidings"). Despite her own position of being at the bottom rung of her society she cannot keep this good news to herself; she brings her neighbours to belief that the Messiah is here and his kingdom established, not only for the nation of the Jews but for everyone where the temple of God is not just confined to Jerusalem or, for the Samaritans, Mount Gerizim, but amazingly, beautifully, is found in each and every human heart that has an encounter with God through His son Jesus whose very name means the one who saves. Through the word and actions of Jesus for the woman at the well, and for us to, we experience the love of the Father for each and every one of us also that the Holy Spirit is lovingly placed in our hearts and souls. The gift given to us by Jesus is the very love at the heart of the life of the Holy Trinity itself. This is a perpetual fountain of divine love what wells up in our souls which, if we are faithful, will gradually transform us where we will share the divine life of God, something that is beautiful and eternal, though it is beyond our description and our imagination. Like the Samaritan woman today, despite who we are, despite what we have may have done or not done, despite the condition of our lives, Jesus waits for us by the well of salvation, He wants to speak to us in our hearts and our souls, He invites us to change our lives through repentance, He offers us the refreshment of grace, and the nourishment of the sacraments in which He himself is truly present. He wants to be with us and desires us to want to be with Him in every moment of our earthly lives and in eternity. Like the woman at the well, it is up to us to choose life. I hope and pray that Lent is going well for you. God bless and keep you all. Fr Chris