Dear Parish Family, 

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well makes a wonderful reading for every believer. It is packed with wit and wisdom as two completely different persons argue as if it is a duel or a dance. Jesus looks at the reality of the woman’s life from a ‘heavenly’ perspective, while the woman treats Jesus to a street smart rebuff from a muddied and frivolous life. We could watch the debate and see in it a metaphor for our great thirst. For Jesus, ‘living water’ is Spirit filled encounter with the Divine, while for the woman ‘living water’ is the material water that issues from a spring.

We languish for the living water, the inner connection with the Divine. It satisfies and refreshes. It revives and cleanses. We die without it. This is our condition: we thirst. It was a mighty thirst that led Israel out of Egypt, just as it was their thirst that led them to complain that even Egypt would be better than the dry, godforsaken desert. And it was their thirst that God would slake, even from a rock. God would be their well of life just as surely as the manna-bread would fall from heaven.

Thirst led the Samaritan woman not only to a well, but to Jesus who would refresh her spirit and transform her world. It was the same thirst that drew her through all the detours with the lovers of her broken life. If she could only realize, Jesus said, that he himself was the Living Water, the fulfillment of every hope.

At the well, Jesus was the unexpected visitor who would welcome her. He was the stranger who knew her intimate secrets. He seemed to be in need and she was unwilling to help. When prodded on her desolate search for meaning, she realizes that the stranger was a prophet, a giver of a spiritual wellbeing that would “become a fountain within, leaping up to provide eternal life.”

Receiving his truth, the woman’s thirst was quenched. Believing him, yielding to his word, her desires were finally met. She left her water jug to enter into ministry for her people. She moves from a life of dissipation and disdain to a mission of sharing the good news. Jesus reaches out to the people of the village through a very unlikely agent. This reveals the great truth of God’s thirst for us, even in our sin. Remember, it is Jesus who asked the confused and searching woman for a drink. It is he who reached out to her.

When we see the full mystery of Lent and Easter, we realize that, as great as our dry thirst and wide yearning may be, it is God’s eternal thirst for us, for our faith, our trust, our love, that is the central mystery of our being.