A Scripture passage that we often hear during Lent is from John 4. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” In this ever astonishing line, one aspect that stands out is the ‘exchange’ the Lord offers for the asking: real, created water for real eternal water, grace.
As we know, there are so many exchanges that run through Salvation History; this strong theme is recounted repeatedly in the Office. Some of the most memorable ones from Lent “Thus they exchanged their glory / For the image of an ox that eats grass.” “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:26). There is also the exchange offered to the Lord by Satan in the desert, where we see Jesus turn these degrading compromises into victory over all that ensnares us in our pursuit of Him. At the climax of the whole Liturgical Year we enter into the ultimate exchange: the Lord’s own gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist, and the Triduum where we relive the Father’s greatest exchange that we hear proclaimed in the Exultet: “to ransom a slave you gave away your Son.”
As we journey through these forty days, certainly we know the Lord has His own Lenten program through which He will lead us. It may be as surprising to us as His encounter with the Samaritan woman was to her. Perhaps the challenge is to recognize the ‘exchanges’ the Lord offers us continually. This can be the obstacle so often as we likely know from experience. He asks a little of us to give us inestimably more. Sometimes He asks a great deal. And sometimes during Lent a little is a great deal. But we know that always, there is something greater that He gives in return, so often no less than more of Himself. So whether we are exchanging our sins in confession for grace straight from Calvary, or the little energy we have in the morning to sing the praises of the Lord, whatever it is we offer, we know that if we ask Him, He will give us living water welling up to eternal life. In the words of Holy Mother Clare “What a great laudable exchange: to leave the things of time for those of eternity, to choose the things of heaven for the goods of earth, to receive the hundred-fold in place of one, and to possess a blessed and eternal life.”