March 15, 2020. 3rd of Lent. Jn 4, 5-15.19b-26.39a.40-42
On this third Sunday of Lent, we are presented with the Gospel of Jesus who, on his way to Jerusalem, is passing through the region of the Samaritans, in the middle of a hot day, and tired from walking, stops by a well. A Samaritan woman approaches (the Jews and the Samaritans did not get along very well), and Jesus asks her for a drink.
This meeting 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 the recognition of Jesus as the Saviour, and to become messengers of “the water” that he offers us.
Like that woman, we all feel thirsty. Thirst for truth, for happiness, for love, for life. Jesus, who shares our thirst and our needs, meets her and asks her to drink, but also offers her “living water”. And in the dialogue between the two, the way of faith is opened to the woman. Jesus will progressively pass from being a Jew to being Lord, Prophet and Messiah. He leads the woman to recognize the truths and lies of her own life, gives her a vote of confidence, and she will become an announcer of the Messiah to the people of her village.
Jesus is God’s answer to every kind of thirst. But only those who seek God in spirit and in truth, within their own heart, can find the answer.
Juan Ramon Gomez Pascual, cmf
