St. Frances Cabrini Parish

Your 6th-to-9th grade daughters, granddaughters, and nieces do not want to miss this! Register early! Limited space!

Is your daughter looking for the Faith Camp registration forms? The wait is over! Download the forms today for Faith Camp 2017 here: http://springfieldop.org/join-us-2/join-us/vocations-links/faith-camp/

Female students entering 6th grade to entering 9th grade, join us for Dominican Faith Camp at Sacred Heart Convent! The event will be held July 9, 10 and 11, and includes crafts, games and food in a Catholic environment. Meet and pray with the Sisters!

Registration fee is $50. Registration and permission forms are on the page link listed above (five forms to complete). Contact Sister Teresa Marron, OP with any questions at 217-787-0481 or [email protected]. Please submit forms by June 26, 2017.

Here is a free, family friendly event you might want to add to your calendar!

The Festival

Dear Friends,
In this column I have often spoken of discipleship—the call Jesus makes over and over again to invite people to follow him, to learn and embrace his message in faith and eventually to take that message to others so that many may enter into gospel living. Today that story of coming to discipleship is told in terms that are deeply personal.

Jesus and his disciples are passing through Samaritan territory on their way from Galilee to Judea. Samaritans were a people whose history, more than 500 years before Christ, included capture and resettlement by foreign tribes who took on a form of faith which the Jewish people considered heretical. Faithful Jews would have avoided interaction with Samaritans as much as possible. Still, they had to pass through Samaritan territory to get from Galilee to Judea.

Jesus sits alone by the well of Jacob while his followers go off to buy food. A Samaritan woman approaches to draw water from the well. Jesus would have been expected to ignore her, even to turn away. Instead, he asks for a drink from her vessel, an unheard of intimacy which starts them off on an even more intimate conversation.

This woman is shocked that Jesus should speak to her, much less expect to drink from her jug. But Jesus draws her in: “If you knew the gift of God . . . you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman is intrigued, but she continues to talk around the periphery of faith, perhaps expecting, at any moment, to be treated with contempt. Jesus, however, does not reject her but takes her a step deeper into the mystery of his grace: “. . . the water I shall give you will become . . . a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Now the woman really is interested, so she asks directly, “. . . give me this water.” This time Jesus seems to step back in this dance of evangelizing grace: “Go call your husband.” He knows well her marital history, but he draws it out of her so there can be no secrets between them. The woman, once again fearing rejection, does what we all do when we feel threatened: She changes the subject. Jesus, still does not turn her away. He promises her a worship in Spirit and in truth—one that will bring her into the circle of his other disciples.

Finally she plunges into the waters of faith. “I know the Messiah is coming . . . he will tell us everything.’ Jesus rewards her courage by telling her clearly, ‘I am He.’ Even a Samaritan would recognize this I AM reference as pointing to the God who once told Abraham his name was I AM.

Seldom do we get to witness a person’s journey of faith laid out so clearly. Yet we have seen this woman move from fear and indifference to engagement in conversation with this Jewish stranger to openhearted faith. She has become a disciple before our eyes; she is now ready to spread the good news to her townsfolk. Her life has been radically changed, and through her, her neighbors will also become disciples.

Imagine the joy and freedom she now feels. Imagine the thrill of setting aside any shame from her former life, for she has discovered the Christ, the one who will set her and her people free. Do we recognize anything of our own story of faith in hers? This Lenten season is a perfect time to reflect on our faith journey, perhaps to share it with another. This is how discipleship becomes Gospel.