3LA23.   Exodus 17:3-7.   “The people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”  The Israelites forgot the pain that they suffered under slavery to the Egyptians and, with the deprivations they were suffering in the desert, only remembered the few good things they once had in Egypt.  Sin can be delightful to our bodies and to our worldly spirit, leaving us mindless to the total destruction to which it is leading us.  When the Israelites saw the water flowing from the rock, they said, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”  Occasionally the Lord does do spectacular things so to make clear his presence in a disbelieving world but for the most part we ought to have the faith that perceives his presence in everyday small things.

John 4:5-42.    Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”  Jesus was declaring that the Old Testament Law or Torah was dead.  “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.”  Jesus was saying that, instead of God being present in the writing on a scroll, he will be present in the divine presence of the Holy Spirit and of the truth, the reality of God’s eternal design for us to guide us to heaven.  Jesus, in his humanity, was intensely immersed in the Holy Spirit when he said, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  To live in the life that the Holy Spirit is breathing into us is the fruit of what God and we, as his co-workers, sow.

Romans 5:1-2, 5-6.  St. Paul wrote, “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.” How do we know that God loves us?  “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”