Sunday Liturgy
Saturday: 5:00 pm
Sunday: 11:00 am
Mission Statement
We are a welcoming Christian community called to embrace and respect the uniqueness of each individual as we join together in our faith and worship. Our ongoing mission is to engage our youth, promote renewal, out reach, evangelization and ecumenical cooperation.
MASS INTENTIONS FOR THE WEEK
Monday, March 9th – 9:00 am Louise Guimond
Tuesday, March 10th – 9:00 am Audrey Leahey
Wednesday, March 11th – 9:00 am Fr. Ken Weir
Thursday, March 12th – 9:00 am Bruno & Anetia Verreault
Friday, March 13th – 9:00 am Ivan Court
Saturday, March 14th – 5:00 pm Victor Enman (Anniv)
Sunday, March 15th – 11:00 am Pauline Olsen (Anniv)
Weekly Reflections (Homily) from Msgr. Sheehan (March 5, 2026)
THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
Dear friends:
Unexpected meetings, unexpected conversations… chance meetings… meetings with strangers… conversations which leave an impact… change our lives… we look back on them and wonder why they so influenced us.
They seemed so innocent… they had awkward beginnings… they weren’t meant to happen… they were on a train, on a place… during holidays… at a bar… in a restaurant…
The person disappeared… we never saw them again… something was said… we opened up… perhaps like never before…
We felt free to talk… defenses were down… the other person was able to handle us and what we said… or what we wondered about… or what was important and who was important in our lives…
It ended in conversation… we never saw them again… like ships in the night… but it was wonderful, and memorable… it couldn’t be recaptured… but it taught us something… something we would never forget… an unforgettable and enduring experience.
Something like that happened to the Samaritan woman at the well… the place was already memorable… but she didn’t care about it being Jacob’s well and it’s great historical and religious significance.
For her and her villagers – it was a mundane place… an everyday place… a place to draw water… no one would be there… it was noon the heat of the day… near siesta time… it would be deserted…
But someone was there… a tired person, tired of the journey… but not tired enough not to ask something of her… and not so tired not to converse with her…
That’s the way life is… momentous things often happen when nothing is supposed to happen… momentous and memorable things often happen in everyday things like just going to a well to fetch water.
The stranger spoke first… he shouldn’t even had spoken to her… he was a Jew… she was a Samaritan… they didn’t mix… they were from peoples who hated each other… they weren’t supposed to have anything to do with each other – let alone ask for something from one another…
He was ready to break natural boundaries… and long held customs and national hostilities and gender differences… and his was a simple request… “Give me a drink”…
And thus it began… a thirsty man asking a woman for a drink… a simple encounter… an everyday gesture… but it led her through to bearing herself to a stranger… she became transparent to him…
He seemed to know so much about her… her background… her life… he could “read” her… so to speak… he could see through her…
He seemed to know her unhappiness, her unfulfillment… her dissatisfaction with life… her emptiness was transparent…
She knew that she wanted more out of life… in her thirst and in her hunger… for real life… more than what was offered her in the well before them… or in her relationships of five broken marriages, or her ancestral worship…
“Give me the kind of water with which I will never be thirsty again…” “Give me what will satisfy my real thirst, my inner thirst… the deepest longings of my heart…” “Can anybody do this… can you really do this?”
“I have not found it in these relationships… I have not found it our worship… I have not found it in “the waters” that I have been drinking which are so unsatisfying to me…”
“What I will give – will be a sustaining thing… it will gush up within you… as a fountain of water… it will carry you… make you leap up into eternity… transcend all that you have set your heart onto – until now…”
“It is a way… a way of life… it will change your worship… your worship won’t matter where it is – as much as it will change your spirit… your heart… your life… your way of life will be your worship.”
“It will be a spring within you… satisfying you like nothing before…”
She had to tell others… she left him… she told others… “come and see”… already she had become a disciple… even as she questioned his identity “Could he be the Messiah?” She began leading others to him.
Through her experience, her chance encounter… and her word… something happened not only to her… but to her fellow citizens… “They left the city and were on their way to him… and many Samaritans believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony…”
Others then had the same experience… they found that he had stirred within them the same response, the same longings were fulfilled in them…”
So they say… “no longer because of what you said… do we believe… what we heard for ourselves makes us accept this person… and what he says…”
“Come and see… someone who can tell us everything that we have ever done. Come and see someone who knows everything that we ever need… come and see someone who tells us how never to thirst and hunger again except for what really will satisfy us… He is a stranger sitting by a well on the outskirts of town… He may well be the Messiah of God.”
Amen.