You can listen to the audio here.
At one time, after I left school, I worked in a garden
centre. It was Summer and hot and
at one point I was so thirsty that when I drank back the glass of water I swear
it went straight over my lips, barely touching my tongue or my throat and went
straight down into my belly. I had been working in the Sun for quite a while
and I really, really needed that water.
You know the feeling. One’s
mouth and throat are so dry and all one can think about is that glass, that
next drop, that will assuage the thirst. One can drown with only a cup’s worth of water in one’s lungs
yet without water one will last only a few days. It can kill us but we need it to live.
It is such an ordinary request that our Lord makes of
this woman: He asks for a drink, but as with everything that involves the Lord
the obvious is not what is actually going on. On Good Friday, from the Cross, He will again declare His
thirst but then as here He is referring not to an ordinary human thirst but His
thirst for our communion with Him and through Him with His Father. Christ thirsts for our salvation and our eternal life with Him.
So our Lord reaches out to this woman with the
simplest and plainest of requests.
Just as it is today in the Holy Land such a request was a more complex
issue back then. After the time of
Kings David and Solomon the Jews were split into two kingdoms: one in the North
and the other in the South and this lead to a tension between the two
kingdoms. About five hundred years
before Christ most of the Jews in the North had been conquered and deported to
Syria and their places taken by Syrian, pagan colonists. Some of the Jews who remained behind
intermarried with these pagans and adopted some of their customs becoming the
Samaritans for their capital was Samaria. They still exist. The Jews in the South around Jerusalem
considered them traitors and unclean and that still holds to this day! So when our Lord asks for water it is
not just shocking that he asks it of a woman whom He does not know but that He
asks it of a Samaritan, someone considered as an enemy by the Jews.
But
what is this Samaritan woman doing there?
Getting water obviously!
But why she do so at noon?
No one goes to fetch water at noon when it so hot. That work is done early in the
morning. What is she doing
here? The answer comes when our
Lord tells her to fetch her husband and she partly admits her situation, a
situation He already knows. Those
who are cruel might call her names but this lady has certainly done the rounds
and the women of Samaria have ostracized her. She comes at noon to the well for her water so as to avoid
all the looks, the comments and the hostility she would otherwise have to
endure. This woman is out on her
own, outside a people who themselves are outsiders. So she is doubly an outcast for she is cast out of the
people who were cast out by the Jews.
Indeed more so since she has a history of broken relationships.
He initiates the conversation but she makes it about
religion. He uses that to lead her
to faith in Him. It is like
watching a greyhound go after its prey.
She weaves and dodges but she cannot escape Him. He will not give up the chase because
He thirsts for her salvation.
Look at the path the debate takes: she starts by
opposing Jew and Samaritan; then she asks Him directly does He think Himself
greater than Jacob? When He brings
her to admit her poor relationship decisions, she immediately shoots back that
He thinks Himself a prophet! Then
she ducks back to the Jew versus Samaritan question, where is the right place to
worship Jerusalem or Samaria? All
along He is not deflected but teaches her that He is the real source of the Living
Water of the Holy Spirit and the true Well of Eternal Life. She has been searching for love but no
human love can satisfy us like God’s love and that is what she has really been thirsting
for. The waters of the world cannot
assuage the real thirst in her heart nor can they wash away her sins or sooth
her longing without His power and it is only through faith in Him that she can
find satisfaction. He thirsts for
her salvation and He is the only one who can assuage her thirst for love.
The whole conversation sends her fleeing to the city,
forgetful of all the hostility within.
“Could this be the Christ?” she asks because already she is coming to
faith in Him and real faith makes us missionaries, makes us evangelists. She goes from being the public sinner and
the outsider to an ostracized people to a herald of the Good News and a missionary
to her fellow Samaritans. She who had no husband has found the
Bridegroom of Israel and the Saviour of Man. She who thirsted for love has found the true love we all
thirst for in Christ.
The returning disciples still do not understand. They have missed both His conversation
with the woman and the truth that He offers. They still think in terms of this
world and its priorities. He does
not depend on earthly food. He
thirsts for our salvation and finds nourishment, the satisfaction of His real
hunger, in doing His Father’s will, in bringing others to faith in Him, and
through Him to eternal life.
Lent we are told is a journey but it is also a
conversation. Christ draws near to
us in our prayer, in His word and in the Sacraments. He speaks to us, thirsting for our salvation and our
communion with the Father through Him.
We are the ones who raise difficulties, who duck and dive to avoid His
call, but He will not give up. He
wants us to become more and more aware of the true thirst that lies in the
depth of our hearts so that, awakening our faith, we may begin to drink of Him
and be satisfied. Nothing, however
good or beautiful, can assuage our thirst the way Christ can. No one, no one can love us the way
Christ can. To follow Christ and
not to spend time close to Him, drinking of His love and mercy, is to live a
half-life, a shallow life. Turn
away from the other voices, the distractions, the hostile and judgmental world,
come out to meet Christ at the well of your heart and give time to listening to
Him in prayer. Christ is near us,
is with us and in us and now is the time to especially attend to His Presence. Christ speaks to us and now is the time
to listen. He sits by the well of
our hearts and offers us the living water of His love for us. Why go thirsty?
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