Bible Study Notes 3/2/26

3rd Sunday of Lent

Mar 05, 2026

We’re back, baby! The priest who leads our Bible Study group has been traveling the world for the past few weeks, so meetings were put on hold until he returned. It’s been a while since we last gathered, so we mostly caught up on life and went on several long tangents related to the readings.

Every Monday night for a few hours, I attend a Bible study group that meets at the local Fatima Shrine. The shrine’s rector leads the group as we analyze and share our thoughts on the readings for the upcoming Sunday Mass. I’m hopeful that sharing my notes will help me continue to think and pray with these passages before Mass, and will also give you an opportunity to delve a little deeper into the Word of God.

Disclaimer: Since my note-taking is somewhat erratic and illegible, I’ll add any information that I may have missed or mistranscribed during the meeting. Please keep in mind that this is not intended to be a comprehensive study that examines every possible aspect of the readings and tells you what is most important. Instead, these are just points that made an impact on me, or as a group, we explored. Think of these notes as adding to your background knowledge of the passages, so when you go to pray with them, something new may distinguish itself that did not before.

Readings for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

Exodus 17:3-7
Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
John 4:5-42

A prayer before reading and studying these passages in preparation for Holy Mass by St. John Chrysostom:

O Lord Jesus Christ, open Thou the eyes of my heart, that I may hear Thy word and understand and do Thy will, for I am a sojourner upon the earth. Hide not Thy commandments from me, but open mine eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of Thy law. Speak unto me the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom. On Thee do I set my hope, O my God, that Thou shalt enlighten my mind and understanding with the light of Thy knowledge, not only to cherish those things which are written, but to do them; that in reading the lives and sayings of the saints I may not sin, but that such may serve for my restoration, enlightenment and sanctification, for the salvation of my soul, and the inheritance of life everlasting. For Thou art the enlightenment of those who lie in darkness, and from Thee cometh every good deed and every gift. Amen.

Exodus 17:3-7

In those days, in their thirst for water,
the people grumbled against Moses,
saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?
Was it just to have us die here of thirst
with our children and our livestock?”
So Moses cried out to the LORD,
“What shall I do with this people?
a little more and they will stone me!”
The LORD answered Moses,
“Go over there in front of the people,
along with some of the elders of Israel,
holding in your hand, as you go,
the staff with which you struck the river.
I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb.
Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it
for the people to drink.”
This Moses did, in the presence of the elders of Israel.
The place was called Massah and Meribah,
because the Israelites quarreled there
and tested the LORD, saying,
“Is the LORD in our midst or not?”

Incident re-used in the form of a warning in Ps 95:8-9 and Heb 3:7-9, respectively:
- Harden not your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.”
- “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.””
The other account of Moses hitting the rock twice is in Numbers 20:1-11, but is not the same as the one recorded here.
There are various times throughout the exodus that the people’s hearts hardened and became closed off from God. Sometimes God relents in punishments, but other times He lets the transgressors experience the brute force of their consequences. Think of the difference between the seraph serpents and the quails.
- God chastises as a way to bring us back to Him, but by and large, He is a long-suffering and merciful God.
Ultimately, the fundamental questions of the world, as addressed in this passage is: Is God in our midst?
- Asking this questions is an act of faith in itself because you have a vision of God that you can either turn towards or away from.
- Think of Christ on the Cross when He cried out, “Eloi, Eloi,” quoting Psalm 22.

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Brothers and sisters:
Since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
to this grace in which we stand,
and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
And hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Romans is roughly broken up into the following sections:
- Chapters 1-8: Salvation
- Chapters 9-11: Relationship of the Jews to the New Covenant
- Chapters 12-16: Practical Applications to the Christian Life
We had a long interlude on inter-religious dialogue between Protestants and Catholics.
- As I discussed in my last post, Do We March in Step?, we should share the faith charitably and appropriately within the context of who were are talking with.
- We need to be careful of the recent trend of inflating the term ‘apologist’ with ‘evangelist.’
- Our Lady of Guadalupe was brought up as an example of something that we can share with Protestants, but perhaps not the first thing. To believe in a miracle such as the one of Our Lady, you first need to have faith. These miracles are not the substance of faith, the Resurrection is. Signs of wonder can point to where the substance is.
There was some slight hating on St. Jerome and his hesitancies about the arrangement and inclusion of certain canonical books: “He was a curmudgeon. But an obedient curmudgeon.”

John 4:5-42

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.”
Jesus said to her,
“Go call your husband and come back.”
The woman answered and said to him,
“I do not have a husband.”
Jesus answered her,
“You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’
For you have had five husbands,
and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain;
but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
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 people worship what you do not understand;
we worship what we understand,
because salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here,
when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth;
and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him,
“I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ;
when he comes, he will tell us everything.”
Jesus said to her,
“I am he, the one speaking with you.”
At that moment his disciples returned,
and were amazed that he was talking with a woman,
but still no one said, “What are you looking for?”
or “Why are you talking with her?”
The woman left her water jar
and went into the town and said to the people,
“Come see a man who told me everything I have done.
Could he possibly be the Christ?”
They went out of the town and came to him.
Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.”
But he said to them,
“I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
So the disciples said to one another,
“Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me
and to finish his work.
Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’?
I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.
The reaper is already receiving payment
and gathering crops for eternal life,
so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.
For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for;
others have done the work,
and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him
because of the word of the woman who testified,
“He told me everything I have done.”
When the Samaritans came to him,
they invited him to stay with them;
and he stayed there two days.
Many more began to believe in him because of his word,
and they said to the woman,
“We no longer believe because of your word;
for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

Christ is often misunderstood in the Gospel of John, and He has to fight to get people to focus on His intended message. Often, the crowd or the disciples will think they understand and make a statement, but Christ will have to repeat a variation on the theme because they don’t get it on the first try.
In the second part of the passage, the narrative shifts to Christ’s identity (Who is He?).
Historically, there is debate about where the original Sychar is located, maybe Shechem? Perhaps related to Genesis 33:18-20.
In verse 7, “Give me a drink,” Christ is on the cusp of being rude and it sounds as if the woman is taken aback by His nerve in talking to a Samaritan, let alone a woman.
Samaritans were a remnant of the non-exiled Jews. When Ezra and Nehemiah came back from the exile, the Samaritans refused to place themselves under the authority of Jerusalem and rejected the later books.
There was a slight tangent about the role of women in religion with the likes of Deborah in the Book of Judges mentioned. Christianity offers an opportunity for women to live out and participate in the salvific plan of God like Mary’s fiat.
There is the popular theory about the Samaritan woman waiting until noon to go to the well in order to avoid murmuring crowds about her marriages, or even because she was not well-liked.
The first reading and this Gospel passage focus on the living water that God provides. First to the Jews wandering in the desert, then again in the Person of Jesus Christ.
- The Samaritan woman, like the wandering Jews, didn’t understand the importance of this gift from God at first and could not appreciate its miraculous-ness.
In her second encounter with Christ, when Christ acts as a prophet by bringing up her multiple marriages, she finally begins to understand His identity, transitioning from limited/skeptical point of view, to an intrigued/curious point of view.
In verse 23, “the hour is coming” is characteristic of John and alludes to the coming Death and Resurrection of Christ. While referring to His Death, it is also referring to now/here, lived in the eschatological tension (favorite theological term) of the Early Christian communities, and in whose spirit we continue waiting for the Parousia.
- The immediate spiritual meaning is that Christ’s mission is to go beyond/outside the social norm to meet those who are there and bring them closer to Him.
- I noticed a slight parallel in verse 23’s “coming” and “is now” and verses 25 and 29’s “Messiah is coming” and “Can this be the Christ?”
In verse 4, did Christ really have a ‘necessity’ to go through Samaria? There really was no sense of urgency to be there, but He had to obey the Father’s will. So, there was a Divine necessity: “He had to pass through Samaria” (v. 4).
- The Father’s will is the driving force of Jesus’ actions, however confusing they may seem to us at the onset. But because of this slight sojourn, Christ interacted with Photina.
You can lead a Samaritan to living water, but you can’t make her drink.
- Sorry I had to, it was right there!
- Seriously though, Christ offers living water to the Samaritan woman, but He won’t force her understanding, He allows the Holy Spirit to move in her heart and for her to come to an understanding.
Discussion on whether or not Photina understands that Christ is talking about the spiritual life sooner in the passage or later.
- Where does her mind begin to shift? When does her spiritual insight kick in?
- Regardless of when exactly it is, she eventually converts and recognizes Christ’s identity. What comes later is an absolute recognition and her slow understanding pales in comparison to this revelation.
The disciples are the ones in the end of the passage who are stilled trapped in the physical world, unable to immediately jump into the spiritual realm Christ is discussing.
- They tell him to eat and ask if others have brought Him something to eat (vv. 31-33). Like an Italian nonna, they fuss over His eating habits, while Christ is on a totally different plane of existence.
In verses 37-38, even though the twelve are ‘here’ now, Christ talks about the future and that they will not be the only ones to bring people to Christ: “For here the saying 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 labor.”
- Photina goes and tells the other townspeople about the Messiah (sowing the seed of the Gospel), and the disciples and Christ will be the ones to receive them and teach them (reaping the harvest).
- People will hear about Christ and go and see Him, so others will sow and reap, completely independent of the twelve.
- Reminiscent of Amos 9:13, ““Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.””