A Reflection on My 1st Scrutiny
Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well
A Reflection on My 1st Scrutiny - March 20, 2022
Today was the first of three scrutinies for Catholic converts - a ritual of discernment that included standing and kneeling before the Church, being prayed over, as well as receiving the Church’s ancient creed.
There’s a unique Gospel reading for each of the three scrutinies. This first was Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42).
What struck me today was the similarities between my faith journey and the Samaritan woman. I may not have had five different spouses like the Samaritan woman, but like her, I thought I had all the theological answers, never considering that perhaps the premise of my beliefs was somewhat incomplete.
This morning I resonated with the part where Jesus said, “You worship what you don’t know. We worship what we do know.”
This journey into the Catholic Church has been a process of learning everything I didn’t know about Christianity - 2000 years of history and tradition, certainly. But it has also been an exercise in falling in love with Jesus all over again, of experiencing a supernatural realm I had never considered, and discovering what church means in a fuller sense of the word.
If you’ve been following me in this process, I’m sure my reflections have gotten annoying, but you need to think of me like a child in the English countryside who just discovered a wardrobe that isn’t just a closet for cloaks but a portal into a magical world, despite my insistence that it was all just make believe. I continue to be both embarrassed at my past anti-Catholic attitude, while simultaneously utterly relieved to have been extended the grace to see for myself - for Jesus to show up at a time where I was sitting alone at a well and offer me living water.
As I reflected this morning, I also grieved. The reason the Samaritans and the Jews had two very different ideas of the same God was because of the animosity that kept them apart. There’s a long history of animosity and division (wars even) between Protestants and Catholics, and we (and the world) are all worse for it. The more we dismiss each other, the more likely we are to dismiss the true Messiah at work right in front of us.