For the next three Sundays of Lent, Saint John provides the gospel narratives proper to catechumenal initiation and important to the renewal of our baptismal vocation. In our Lenten pilgrimage, we now pause with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to reflect on Jesus Christ’s irreplaceable role for our salvation (John 4:5-42).
With the samaritan woman and the disciples
Water is a precious gift of God: Paradise is pictured as watered by a four-pronged stream (Genesis 2:10); the patriarchs and their families traveled from well to well saluting these sources of life-giving water with shouts of joy (Numbers 21:17-18); and the Promised Land correspondingly is a land that “drinks in rain from the heavens” (Deuteronomy 11:11). Water as a bearer of life is a symbol of salvation and of the messianic gifts (Isaiah 12:3; Ezekiel 47:1). In the meeting between Jesus and a Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob in Sychar, Samaria, this spiritual significance of water surfaced with definitive clarity. The endless need and toiling for water is represented by the woman; the disciples too as in a subplot represent the preoccupation with physical food.
The woman is led step by step to the realization that she needs living water that quenches thirst so that it never reoccurs, a water “gushing up to eternal life”. She discovers that she is spiritually thirsty and does not want to be restricted to the physical level where the only water is the one drawn from the ground. She wants water she can drink anytime and anywhere. Leveling up, Jesus next uncovers the fact that no husband or man has put life into her, making her fruitful: the gods of Babylon the Samaritans brought from the exile were no husbands! She is a woman still looking for a true husband—the marriage imagery now illustrates her need for the true intimacy with God. And that does not depend on which mountain one worships, but on Jesus who alone can say “I am” the truth and the life and the living water, the Messiah.
Jesus as the living water
The thirsty seeks water, but here water is seeking the thirsty—to give life, the life everlasting. Asked for a drink, the woman who dared to exchange words with Jesus, encountered the awaited Messiah who gave her living water. Tapping into His ultimate identity as the Word of God, Jesus put into her God’s love and life. And to the disciples, asking Jesus to eat, was revealed that His food, His life, is to do the will of the Father; for this He came “down from heaven” (John 6:38). But unlike the woman, the disciples were simply astonished and kept silent, without questioning and pursuing further what they do not know yet.
Jesus talked to the woman to invite her to do the will of God who sent Him. And He invited His disciples, as well, to see, in faith and hope, “the fields ripe for the harvest”. There are many workers in His Father’s field. The woman and the other Samaritans who received His words were the first fruits; the woman herself left her water jar, the physical dimension of life no longer preoccupies her, and became an instrument to draw to Jesus many others, who must however see for themselves and finally find out what they want: for Jesus to stay with them. All the followers of Jesus, nourished by Him, must participate in the mission of salvation; all can receive now the divine life, no more waiting and making do with substitutes.
Alálaong bagá, at the well of Jacob the woman and the other Samaritans encountered Jesus, God’s living water for His people. And they experienced communing with God in Jesus, a personal intimacy that remains. Jesus is the ultimate evangelizer, but he wants his followers to bring others into contact with him. Like the well, the liturgy is the privileged place where we gather because there the living water springs up abundantly; where the Word of God is proclaimed and the Spirit stirs up faith, nourishment and communion.
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, 5 to 6 a.m. on dwIZ 882, or by audio-streaming on www.dwiz882.com.