March 12, 2023 (Third Sunday of Lent, Year A)
Water. Something we take for granted. If we are thirsty, we simply grab a cup from the faucet or open a bottle. But water, in fact, is one of the most important nutrients our body needs. In fact, the body requires a lot of water to maintain an internal temperature balance and keep cells alive. In general, a person can survive for about three days without water.
We see the importance of water in the First Reading (Exod. 17:3-7). The Israelites are wandering through the desert after their escape from slavery in Egypt. Soon they begin to complain to Moses about the lack of water, asking why did he lead them out of Egypt where they had plenty of water? So, Moses cries out to the Lord for help. He is afraid the people will start to act violently against him.
The Lord tells Moses to go to a the rock on Mount Horeb, where they are camped, and strike it with his staff. Moses follows the Lord’s instructions. He takes some elders with him to the rock and strikes it with his staff and the water, a gift from God, flows for the people to drink and water their animals. These places are remembered as Massah and Meribah. Massah, meaning testing, and the name Meribah meaning quarreling because this is where the people tested the Lord and he miraculously produced living water for them.
In the Gospel (Jn. 4:5-52), we hear another story about water. This time involving Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Jesus and his disciples have been traveling and they arrive in Samaria, where a people live who have been involved with a feud with the Jews for a very long time. Jesus is tired so he sends the disciples into town for supplies while he sits to take a rest near a well.
Soon a Samaritan woman approaches the well and Jesus asks her to give him a drink. The woman questions his request for it was unheard of for a Jewish person to socialize with a Samaritan, and a woman no less. The woman does not know who Jesus is and she questions Jesus’ motives. She says, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jn. 5:9b). Jesus responds to her question, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman rebukes Jesus, saying he doesn’t even have a bucket, and does he think he is greater than her ancestor Jacob who built this well for the people. Jesus takes the opportunity to change the gist of the conversation and the meaning of water here. He says, “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.” (Jn. 4:13-15).
The woman is intrigued. She wonders where she can get such water. Jesus then goes on to converse with her about her husband and he rightly describes the order of events which have made up her marital status. The woman is shocked that Jesus can know everything about her in this way and she says she would like to have some of his miraculous water. But Jesus tells her the folly of the Samaritan way to worship and indicates that he is the source of this water by saying, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.” (Jn. 4:23).
The woman says to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” And Jesus says, “I am he, the one speaking with you.” (4:26-27). The woman then runs off to tell the town’s people that she has discovered the Messiah. The subject of water has kind of been lost in the midst of this revelation from Jesus. And we are told that “many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified (Jn. 4:39)
This is the miracle which is Jesus. What he has done is taken something simple, like water, that the woman can understand, and create a disciple who brings to belief many Samaritans even with their great animosity to the Jews.
The Lord creates this miracle for us, too. He offers us the same living water that he had given to the woman at the well. He invites all true seekers of God to “come to me and drink” His living water (John 7:37). By living the gospel of Jesus Christ, we develop within ourselves a living spring that will quench eternally our thirst for happiness, peace, and everlasting life. And from us this life giving water of Jesus will flow to others whom we encounter so that they may never thirst again.
