John 4, 5-42:
Sunday, 12th March 2023 (3 Lent A)
On this third Sunday of Lent, the Gospel presents Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, passing through the region of the Samaritans, in the middle of a hot day, and tired from walking, he stops at a well. A Samaritan woman (Jews and Samaritans did not get along very well) comes up to him, and Jesus asks her for a drink.
This encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman from whom he asks for water from the well fills me with hope every time I read it. It is an encounter that everyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus must go through. It is an encounter that must lead us to recognise Jesus as Saviour, and to become messengers of “the water” he offers us.
Like that woman, we all thirst. Thirst for truth, for happiness, for love, for life. Jesus, who shares our thirst and our needs, meets her and asks her to for a drink, but also offers her “living water”. And in the dialogue between the two, the way of faith opens up to the woman. Jesus progressively moves from being a Jew to being a lord, prophet and messiah. He leads the woman to recognise the truths and lies of her own life, he gives her a vote of confidence, and she will become the herald of the Messiah to the people of her village.
Jesus is God’s answer to every kind of thirst. But only the one who seeks God in spirit and in truth, in their own heart, will find the answer.
Juan Ramón Gómez Pascual, cmf
Do you quench your thirst?
