Reflection for 8 March 2026: 3rd Sunday of Lent (Year A)
“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.“ (Rom 5:6-8)
Dear Marian Helpers and Members of our Marian Family,
Scripture doesn’t mince words: All of us are sinners, struggling with our weaknesses, deficiencies, and tendencies to act in an unhelpful or self-centred manner in one way or another.
Perhaps this time of Lent has been an opportunity to see just how broken and miserable (as St. Faustina would say), we actually are.
We live in a broken world full of corruption, death, secularism, indifference, and war. Recent events in the Middle East and here in the UK remind us of this fact. One of the dangers of these times is that we think there is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel, no good news.
But there is good news . . . the Good News, the Gospel!
Christ died for this broken, sinful, imperfect world. Nothing we did earned this great love. In fact, if anything, we deserved the opposite. Yet, the love of the Lord is so strong that He ignores our sinfulness and offers us the gift of His love and life instead.
Part of this gift, though, is changing who we are and how we act. Accepting the gift is not enough…we must act on it too.
The people of Israel did not want to change and so they punished themselves in their stubbornness and hardness of heart. Unlike them, the Samaritan woman at the well received the gift and it changed her whole life.
Are we willing to change our whole lives too? To venture into the unknown trusting only in the guidance and Providence of God?
The Christian life requires change, constant change. Stagnation is not an option in the spiritual life, brothers and sisters. What, by God’s grace and some elbow grease, will you change this Lent?
May God bless you now and always!
Fr Alex Pumphrey, MIC
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Contact Father Alex at info@divinemercy.org.uk
Please send us your prayer intentions during Lent! (click here). We will place them at the foot of our altar in the Divine Mercy Apostolate’s Chapel here in West Ealing, London and will remember them in our daily Chaplets of Divine Mercy.
