Throughout the Lenten season, we will post reflections for holy days and Sundays from this year’s Lenten reflection booklet, Peace compels us, which includes all-new reflections written by Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., Pax Christi USA’s bishop president, and Michael Angel Martin, coordinator of Pax Christi Florida, and classic reflections from past booklets, like the one below written by Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace Fr. Chris Ponnet in 2014.
Click here to see all reflections as they are posted as well as links to other Lenten resources on our Lent 2026 webpage.
If you are looking for a daily reflection booklet specially curated for Lent, you can still purchase and download this year’s e-booklet, Peace compels us: Reflections for Lent 2026.
REFLECTION FOR Sunday, March 8, 2026
by Fr. Chris Ponnet
Originally published in 2014
Exodus 17:3-7 | Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 | John 4:5-42
“Is God in our midst or not?”
Exodus 17:7
As a chaplain at LAC+USC Medical Center, I use and appreciate “The Sacred Art of Living and Dying,” a spiritual assessment tool that invites me to rat where I am on the scale of 1-5 around the issues of meaning in my life, relationships in my life, where reconciliation is needed in my life, and where I find and give hope. John’s gospel (4: 5-6) tells us that “Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.” Jesus sat down. He found a place of reflection. He expressed his need and asked: “Give me to drink.” If we are ill, elderly, imprisoned for protesting war or hatred, or just busy after a day of multitasking, we can take comfort that Jesus also was tired.
Patients, refugees or migrants, people living with chronic illness, people who have been sentenced to life in prison or given a death penalty, our family and community members, in other words, all of us, are in need of that “drink” that will renew us, that will fill us up, that will quench our desires/thirsts.
For many of us, Lent is the time to join Jesus in fasting from that which fractures relationships, for that which prevents reconciliation, from that which causes us to lose vision, meaning, or hope. The letter to the Romans (5: 1-2) calls us to “boast in hope in the glory of God.” May we take time to sit, to reflect on meaning, reconciliation, relationships, and hope. May we sit with Jesus and ask for that which will truly fill us and quench our thirst.
Reflection: Where do you need to go today to reflect and be renewed?
>> Join the Pax Christi USA community on Monday, March 9, for the third of our weekly series of Lenten prayer services over Zoom. Click here for more information and to register, if you haven’t already. (If you have registered, no need to sign up again — the same link is used each week.)
>> Click here to see more resources for prayer, study and action this Lenten season.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace Fr. Chris Ponnet was the pastor of the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care and administrator of Urban Interfaith Chaplaincy Clinical Pastoral Education based at the LAC+USC Medical Center. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1983, was director of the Department of Spiritual Care at the USC Medical Center since the 1990s, and previously served on the Pax Christi USA National Council. Up until his unforeseen death during surgery in October 2025, Fr. Chris was deeply active in the interfaith social justice community in Southern California, especially on the death penalty, rights for the LGBTQ community, and rights for immigrants.