Third Sunday of Lent

Book of Exodus

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?"

Psalms

Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”

Letter to the Romans

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 that has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet 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.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John

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 Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything."
Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is 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 Messiah?
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 his 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."

St. Luigi Orione(Priest (1872-1940))

Saint Luigi Orione Priest (1872-1940) St. Luigi Orione was born in Pontecurone, diocese of Tortona, on June 23, 1872. At thirteen, he entered the Franciscan Friary of Voghera (Pavia), but he left after one year because of poor health. From 1886 to 1889, he was a pupil of St. John Bosco at the Valdocco Oratory (Youth Center) in Turin. On October 16, 1889, he joined the diocesan seminary of Tortona. As a young seminarian, he devoted himself to the care of others through membership in the San Marziano Society for Mutual Help and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. On July 3, 1892, he opened the first Oratory in Tortona for the Christian formation of boys. On October 15, 1893, he started a boarding school for poor boys in the Saint Bernardine estate. On April 13, 1895, Luigi Orione was ordained a priest. At the event, the Bishop gave the clerical habit to six pupils of the boarding school. Within a brief span of time, Don Orione opened new houses at Mornico Losana (Pavia), Noto in Sicily, Sanremo and Rome. Around the young Founder, there grew up seminarians and priests who made up the first core group of the Little Work of Divine Providence. In 1899, Fr. Luigi founded the branch of the Hermits of Divine Providence. The Bishop of Tortona, Mgr. Igino Bandi, by a decree on March 21, 1903, issued the canonical approval of the Sons of Divine Providence (priests, lay brothers and hermits) - the male congregation of the Little Work of Divine Providence. The congregation's aim is to "co-operate to bring the little ones, the poor and the people, to the Church and to the Pope, by means of the works of charity," and professes a fourth vow of special "faithfulness to the Pope." In the first Constitutions of 1904, among the aims of the new Congregation, there appears that of working to "achieve the union of the separated Churches." Inspired by a profound love for the Church and for the salvation of Souls, Fr. Luigi was actively interested in the new problems of his time, such as the freedom and unity of the Church, the Roman question, modernism, socialism and the Christian evangelization of industrial workers.He rushed to assist the victims of the earthquakes of Reggio and Messina (1908) and the Marsica region (1915). By appointment of Saint Pius X, he was made Vicar General of the diocese of Messina for three years. On June 29, 1915, twenty years after the foundation of the Sons of Divine Providence, he added to the "single tree of many branches" the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity who are inspired by the same founding charism. Alongside them, he placed the Blind Sisters, Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament. Later, the Contemplative Sisters of Jesus Crucified were also founded.For lay people, he set up the associations of the "Ladies of Divine Providence," the "Former Pupils," and the "Friends." More recently, the Don Orione Secular Institute and the Don Orione Lay People's Movement have come into being. Following the First World War (1914-1918), the number of schools, boarding houses, agricultural schools, charitable and welfare works increased. Among his most enterprising and original works, he set up the "Little Cottolengos" for the care of the suffering and abandoned, which were usually built on the outskirts of large cities to act as "new pulpits" from which to speak of Christ and of the Church - "true beacons of faith and of civilization." Don Orione's missionary zeal, which had already manifested itself in 1913 when he sent his first religious to Brazil, expanded subsequently to Argentina and Uruguay (1921), Palestine (1921), Poland (1923), Rhodes (1925), the USA (1934), England (1935), Albania (1936). From 1921-1922 and from 1934-1937, he made two missionary journeys to Latin America: to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, going as far as Chile. He enjoyed the personal respect of the Popes and the Holy See's Authorities, who entrusted him with confidential tasks of sorting out problems and healing wounds, both inside the Church in society. He was a preacher, a confessor and a tireless organiser of pilgrimages, missions, processions, live cribs and other popular manifestations and celebrations of the faith. He loved Our Lady deeply and fostered devotion to her by every means possible and, through the manual labour of his seminarians, built the shrines of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona and Our Lady of Caravaggio at Fumo. In the winter of 1940, with the intention of easing the heart and lung complaints that were troubling him, he went to the Sanremo house, even though, as he said, "it is not among the palm trees that I would like to die, but among the poor who are Jesus Christ." Only three days later, on March 12, 1940, surrounded by his confreres, Don Orione passed away while sighing, "Jesus, Jesus! I am going." St. Luigi's body was found uncorrupted at its first exhumation in 1965. It has been exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the shrine of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona ever since October 26, 1980 - the day in which Pope John Paul II inscribed Don Luigi Orione in the Book of the Blessed. He was canonized on May 16, 2004.

St. Maximilian()

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Category: Mass by Year / Catholic Missal 2023 / Catholic Missal of march 2023