Are We Drinking From The Right Well?

3^rd Sunday of Lent (A); March 12, 2023

Ex 17:3-7.  Ps 95.  Rom 5:1-8.  Jn 4:5-42

Deacon Jim McFadden

            This Sunday we have the wonderful opportunity to revisit the story of the woman at the well, which is the definitive text of Christian evangelization.  The lengthy Gospel passage tells us Jesus’ meeting with a Samaritan woman.  He is on a long journey with his disciples and he takes a break near a well in Samaria.  By way of reminder, the Samaritans on account of their accommodation to pagan influences were regarded as heretics by the Jews; indeed, they were despised as being second-class citizens.  Jesus is bone-tired, thirsty.  A woman arrives to draw water from the well and  breaking social and religious conventions, he says  to her: “Give me a drink” (Jn 4:7).  Breaking every barrier, Jesus initiates a conversation in which he reveals to her the mystery of living water, that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life. 

            Water is the focus of this dialogue, which becomes a metaphor for the divine grace that gives eternal life.  The problem is that  we seek in vain to satisfy the deepest yearning of the human heart by drinking water that is something less than God.  This is sin in a nutshell.  Trying to fill  this yearning with something less than God can never work; indeed, it will make us frustrated and addicted to these God-substitutes.  Waking up to this fact is an indispensable step in the process of conversion.

            So, what does Jesus say to the woman  who has regularly visited the well, repeatedly going down the same trodden path that leaves her thirsty. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;   but, whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (v. 13).  Brothers and sisters, if you have ears of faith, LISTEN because the whole spiritual life is contained in these words of Jesus.

            This is it: there is no other way to realize our destiny.  If we drink from the well of the goods of the world—wealth, prestige, power, and pleasure—we’ll just get thirsty again.  Why?  All these things are good if put into a divine perspective; but in the end, they are ephemeral; they fade away, wear off, run-out.  Haven’t we all experienced this syndrome?   Why does it happen?  We have an infinite hunger for an infinite good: all these finite goods either fade away, wear off, or run-out. 

            Continuing these spiritual laws, what is the one reality that never runs out?  What is the fountain that never runs dry?  Answer: the divine life (!) which is precisely what Jesus offers the woman at the well.  You see the infinity of God is not just a theological distinction, but is a matter of utmost spiritual significance.  We are made in the image and likeness of God who is infinite: his life never runs out, wears out.  And, because we have a soul, we can receive God’s very Being.  Along this line, think of the water that Jesus is offering his Church—which is his very mystical Body—with all if its richness—her teaching, sacramental life, liturgies, devotions, Adoration, life of the saints, etc.—is meant to convey to us the divine life which never runs out!  Therefore, that’s the well we should drink from!

            As the story comes to its conclusion, notice what she does.  She puts down the bucket, symbolic of her abandonment of her old way of life.  She let go of all the ways that she strove to satisfy her heart that were without God.  She puts that down.  And, so will we when we let Christ into our lives. 

            And, finally she goes into the village and declares Jesus to everybody.  Having personally encountered the living Jesus—not the idea but the person—she feels the need to talk about him to others, so that others may share in the Good News and reach the point of proclaiming that Jesus “is truly the savior of the world” (v. 42).  People of God, generated to a new life that began at our Baptism, we too are called to witness the life in Christ and the hope that we have in Him.  If our quest and thirst have been thoroughly quenched in Christ, once we’ve been evangelized, we want other people to know.  What is evangelization?  It’s one starving beggar, one thirsty person telling others that they have found the true bread, the living water, which is exactly what she does at the end of the story. 

            So, as we continue our Lenten journey, if we want a model for conversion and evangelization, spend some time with this wonderful story of the woman at the well.  Amen.