Lent - Week 03a
The Samaritan woman
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)On the first reading of the Mass we see the people of Israel during their long journey through the desert, camping in a place where there was no water to drink. They complained against Moses: "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?" Moses prayed to God and his prayers were answered. The Lord said to Moses to strike the rock and the water came out from it and the people drank. This rock from which the children of Israel quenched their thirst, was a figure of Jesus, the Messiah. Our rock is Christ.
The Gospel tells us about Jesus besides Jacob?s well. He is tired out from his travels. It is a touching sight to see our Master so exhausted. He is hungry too, and his disciples have gone to a neighboring village to look for food. And he is thirsty. But tired though his body is, his thirst for souls is even greater. So when the Samaritan woman, the sinner, arrives, Christ with his priestly heart turns eagerly to save the lost sheep, and he forgets his tiredness, his hunger and his thirst. Whenever we get tired, when our horizon is darkened by lowering clouds, then let us turn our eyes to Jesus, to Jesus who is so good, and who also gets tired; to Jesus who is hungry and suffers thirst.
Jesus is the true source of the living water and he does not hold anything back, giving himself to us right up to his holocaust on the Cross. This is because, as he tells the Samaritan woman, "whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Jesus knows that human beings are thirsting for God, and that thirst cannot be quenched by the waters of this earth. Earthly things can only give temporary satisfaction, and they leave a bitter aftertaste. Jesus Christ has come to bring us the water of life, grace, happiness and joy. To the Samaritan who goes to the well to fill her water jar, he declares: "If you knew the gift of God." He is the only one who can give us the "living water."
In Christ the promises of the Prophets have been fulfilled. He came to quench our thirst and open for us the way to happiness. All we have to do is ask him with faith: "Lord, give me this water so that I may not thirst."