3rd Sunday of Lent
Rite of Election
Cathedral of Mary of Queen
March 8, 2026
Delayed Joy
I am delighted to celebrate the Rite of Election here at the Cathedral. As you know, the Rite of Election is usually held on the First Sunday of Lent. On that occasion, this Cathedral is filled to overflowing with catechumens and candidates to be received into the Church from every part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. This year, we were foiled by a weather forecast of snow and freezing rain. But now I am happy to be here to celebrate the Rite of Election for eight of you whom I shall baptize and receive into the Church at the Easter Vigil. Let me now offer you a word of encouragement.
Purification and Enlightenment
During Lent, you are preparing intensely for Baptism. These forty days are a time of purification and enlightenment. As you ponder God’s Word and the Church’s teaching, as you prayerfully reflect on your life, and engage in works of fasting and almsgiving, you seek to encounter the Lord who will reveal you to yourself, and who will deepen your thirst for his truth and love. And how strikingly this morning’s Gospel portrays what this encounter with the Lord means.
The Gospel portrays Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well. The woman routinely comes there to draw water in the middle of the day. But today is different. She meets Jesus and he engages her. He asks for a drink of water and she is surprised, for Jews and Samaritans use nothing in common such as cups and buckets. But the Lord is not looking for water to satisfy physical thirst. He is thirsty for her faith, or better, for her response of faith – just as on the Cross, he will cry out, “I thirst!” The woman does not understand. She is thinking of water, cups, and buckets, but Jesus is speaking of spiritual thirst and the flowing fountain of God’s love. What Jesus describes as thirst is his ardent desire to satisfy this woman’s deep spiritual thirst to come to terms with herself, her past, and her God. Jesus illuminates her past so that she might purify her heart, and by purifying her heart, be filled with the light of the Holy Spirit, thus to worship God in spirit and truth.
Dear catechumens, you see what is going on in this Gospel: the Samaritan woman experiences purification and enlightenment at a well, a well which stands for the baptismal font, that flowing fountain at which you are soon to be cleansed and reborn. Today you are to be counted among the elect; your name is to be enrolled in the book of those to be baptized at Easter. As this great mystery of love and life draws near, I invite you: encounter the Lord in your own life, no less than the woman at the well. Experience how much the Lord loves you, how he thirsts for your faith, how he wants to draw you to himself. Allow the Lord to illuminate your past so that you may see yourself in some measure as God sees you. Ask the Lord to purify your heart of past sins, whatever they may be and to enlighten your minds and hearts with his truth, so that you might embrace his Word in its fullness. Seek the Lord in the poor and the vulnerable and serve him with the same mercy that all of us need from the God who is love. Thus drawn into the Church’s life of faith, worship, and service you will be equipped to worship God in spirit and truth.
Then, when these forty days have run their course, you will stand before the Church to renounce Satan and profess your faith. With great joy you will be baptized, reborn to life everlasting, sharing in the salvation Christ won for you by his Cross and Resurrection. You will be anointed by the Spirit who will fill you with hope in Christ Jesus and seal your relationship with him and with his Church. You will receive Holy Communion for the first time – the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. May you continue to walk resolutely with the Lord and with the Church as we journey together towards the Easter mysteries.
The Rest of Us
And let me say a word to all who are gathered here this Sunday and all who are watching through livestreaming and television: As the Rite of Election unfolds, you and I will hear that it is our collective responsibility to walk with these catechumens. After all, in belonging to the Lord, we belong to one another. How happy we are to see these men and women preparing for Baptism. Let us pray for them. Let us offer them our encouragement. And not only them, but the nearly 2,000 people, many of them young adults, who are entering the Church in this Archdiocese at Easter.
Walking with these catechumens inevitably means deepening our own faith. Most of us are “cradle Catholics” and it’s easy to take our faith for granted. Perhaps you and I need to place ourselves at the well, to stand in the place of the Samaritan woman, and to encounter the Lord Jesus Christ afresh. Let us allow the Lord to purify our hearts in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and to brighten our hearts with the joy that come from knowing and believing that we belong to him and that he loves us beyond all telling. This Lent, by prayer, fasting, and merciful love towards those in need, let us prepare to be “re-immersed” in the Paschal Mystery, that is, the Lord’s saving Death and Resurrection. Then, when Easter dawns, both the newly baptized and received together with those of us who have been Catholics our whole life long, will unite in renouncing Satan and all his works and in proclaiming our faith in the One whose love is stronger than sin and more powerful than death. May God bless us all, and keep us in his love!