Third Sunday of Lent
Fr. Ben Riley
Friends, there is nothing quite like drinking from a natural spring when you are truly thirsty. When your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth and you finally come upon fresh, cold Arkansas water, it tastes like the best thing in the world.
We are blessed to live in a state with so many natural springs. Whenever I drive past one, I try to keep an empty bottle in the car so I can fill it up. If I pass through Hot Springs, I almost always bring a jug along for the ride home.
But my favorite spring is a little more remote. It’s out on the Eagle Rock Loop, a 26-mile hiking trail in the Ouachita National Forest near the Little Missouri River. It’s a beautiful trail and just about the perfect length for a two-day backpacking trip.
The first time I hiked the Eagle Rock Loop I went by myself. I actually enjoy solo backpacking. The problem was not the solitude. The problem was the heat. I was 17 years old and had not yet learned that I prefer fall and winter hiking, not the middle of July.
At the time I was also on a tight budget, so I couldn’t afford a water filtration system. Instead I had chlorine tablets to purify water. That usually works fine, but it means you have to wait about an hour before the water is safe to drink.
I wasn’t very patient.
So on the back side of the hike I decided to skip the usual water stops and push on until I reached a spring someone had told me about, a spring that flows all year long.
About a mile before I reached it, I started to feel the effects of dehydration. My muscles were cramping. I had a terrible headache. I was exhausted and incredibly thirsty.
But when I finally reached that little spring of cold Arkansas water, I dropped my pack, lay down flat on the ground, and drank.
And I can tell you honestly, nothing has ever tasted so good.
In the Gospel today, Jesus meets someone who is thirsty. Not physically thirsty the way I was on that trail, but spiritually thirsty. The-woman at the well stands for every one of us, because every human heart is searching for something that will finally satisfy its thirst.
And this story from John’s Gospel is a kind of master class in evangelization.
It begins with a simple scene. Jesus sits down by Jacob’s well at noon. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water, and Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.”
Now that’s interesting. The whole spiritual life is almost contained in that one line. The problem with sin is what the tradition calls curvatus in se, being curved in on oneself, always trying to fill ourselves with the goods of the world. But Jesus begins by inviting her out of herself. “Give me a drink.” He draws her into generosity, into relationship.
At first she resists. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
But Jesus answers, “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.”
She’s thinking of ordinary water, from the Jacob’s deep well, but Jesus is speaking about something much deeper.
“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 a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Those are some of the most beautiful words in the entire New Testament.
Because the well here stands for all the things we turn to in order to satisfy our thirst. Wealth, success, pleasure, approval, power, reputation. Are these good things? Of course they are good. But drink from them, and you will be thirsty again.
We have all had that experience. “If only I had that job… that relationship … that achievement. .. then I would finally be satisfied.” And maybe we are happy for a little while. But before long, the thirst comes back.
Why? Because the human heart was made for something greater than anything in this world. We were made for God.
And so Jesus says, “I want to give you water that will become a spring within you, welling up to eternal life.” In other words, the divine life itself. The grace of God is given to us, so that we may be give it to others, and then God gives us even more, so that we give more. It’s an eternal, never-ending, spring of life.
Notice how Jesus brings this woman to that point. He does not begin by condemning her or listing her moral failures. He begins with friendship and invitation.
But eventually the moral issue does have to be addressed. He says to her, “Go call your husband.”
She replies. “I have no husband,”
And Jesus says, “You are right. You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”
What is he naming there? The painful pattern she has been caught in. She is searching for love, but in ways that cannot ultimately satisfy her.
Before the living water can really flow, that blockage has to be addressed.
And the same is true for us. During Lent the Lord says to each of us, “I know the wells you have been drinking from. I know the ways you have tried to satisfy your thirst. But there is something in your life that needs to be healed, something that is blocking the flow of grace.”
Lent is a time to face that honestly.
Then the conversation turns to worship. The woman says, “You Jews worship in Jerusalem, we Samaritans worship on this mountain. Which one is right?”
And Jesus answers, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”
In other words, God must become the center of your life. Your ultimate concern. Your heart turned fully toward him.
That worship finds its highest expression in the Mass, where we receive the living water of Christ’s own life. His Body and Sood.
And how does the story end?
The woman leaves her water jar behind and runs back to the town saying, “Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done.”
She doesn’t mean that he listed every detail of her life. She means that he unlocked the mystery of her life. He showed her what she had been searching for all along.
And now she becomes an evangelist.
She leaves the water jar behind, that old way of searching, and runs to tell others about Jesus.
And that is evangelization.
It is telling starving people where to find bread. Telling people dying of thirst where to find water.
Once we have discovered the living water of Christ, we cannot keep it to ourselves. How could we?
We leave the water jar behind, and we go out into the world, with tears of joy in our eyes, and love spilling from our lips. Proclaiming, inviting, even shouting, “Come, see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” “Come and meet the one who finally satisfies the thirst of the human heart.”