What is the story about?
The story of the Samaritan woman is about thirst...
Isn't this story of the Samaritan woman a touching one? John's Gospel in often so theological, it seems we are always on highs with it, and here we have such a human story, such a human woman, such a human Jesus! And nevertheless a great lesson about God. Jesus is tired, it is noon, in the dust and heat of the day, he is sitting, thirsty, waiting for food. And then this woman, alone, coming from nowhere to look for water, finds this man, first laughs at him, but then dare to show little by little her weaknesses, doubts and finally recognizes her real thirst. Thirst, this is what this story is about, and it is not about tap water.

...a thirst for real life
This woman Jesus meets is thirsty, in a concrete way for she comes to get some water, but most of all in a sexual and emotional way: she confesses she had had five husbands, plus another one! She seems at ease with Jesus, even if a Jew, she talks to him freely in a quite ironic and even flirtatious way. Little by little, we understand she is a great lover but yet alone. Thirsty and disappointed, by her endless quest for love and by her incapacity to quench her desire. Tired also, by the routine of the days, unsatisfied with what she can get from her daily life, waiting for the Messiah to, as she says in her naïve way, “explain everything”.

Lent is good time to think about our desires
So as for me, this story is an excellent means in Lent time to think about our own thirst, about our own desires, which can of course concern every aspects of our life. In fact, we live in a society which make of our desires and their immediate satisfaction a kind of rule. And we, as Christians, what are we going to do? Are we trying to satisfy all our desires, is that not an obstacle to the recognition of the real desire of our soul? Then should we, as we were taught for ages, deny our human desires? Or can we, in them and with them, turn to God, as the Samaritan woman will do?

Problems

Are we going to drink from the well or from the spring?
In fact, our story seems to show us clearly that there are two ways to quench our desires: by the water of the well, or by the water of the spring, and, to me, it is a very important distinction. Water from the well is rare, often dirty, hard to reach, and the problem with wells is that there are often people to fall into them! Water from the spring is pure and abundant, freely given, and you will not drown in it. Water from the well is locked in its place, water from the spring is running down the mountains to people in the valley. The well is the means by which the world fills our desires, the spring is the water Jesus gives us.

Do we try to fill our jar or do we enter the living water? The water we shall drink depends on our attitude. Are we coming in life with a little jar we try to fill as much as we can, contenting ourselves with everyday pleasures and distractions? Do we fall into the well as do a lot of addictive persons? Or are we so afraid to fall that we die of thirst where we are? No good solution, you see. So how can we get the living water? How can Jesus change our human desires to lead us to divine life?

Plan

We are going to reflect on these two different attitudes looking at the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan, dialogue in which we can find different interesting couple of oppositions:

• She says “How can you ask me for a drink?”, when Jesus asks “Will you give me a drink?”
• She says “The well is deep”, he replies “the water I give them will become a spring of water”
• She says “I have no husband”, he confesses “I am he” (The Messiah)

“How can you ask me for a drink?” / “Will you give me a drink?”

God comes to us in our everyday needs

Well, as I said before, the Samaritan story can really touch us because it takes place in an everyday situation with very human characters, needing very human things. I think it is good to remember we meet God in our everyday life, even if we do not feel ready for it. The Samaritan seems very far from what Jesus is going to reveal to her. She seems to be very bored with her own life and her everyday tasks, she is disillusioned about men, probably she has not many friends, and Jesus is just for her “another prophet” with beautiful words but unable to provide what she really needs. Don't we often feel like that about God? Is God present only in our times of prayer and celebration, or is he present in the dust and tiredness of the days, when routine seems to overwhelm us? When we think we live differently to how we meant to, when trivial preoccupations fill our lives? Perhaps it is good to remember it is not a reason to believe we are far from God: He is near the well, and not in spite of our desires and occupations or along side them, but in them and through them. Through what we do, what we need and what we run after all day long, He wants us to find his presence .

God is thirsty to share everything with us

Even as Christians, we have a tendency to believe God created us a long time ago and then sits back and watches. The Bible is very insistent on the fact that God want to share with his people. God is in everyday life, at our table, near the well: there are no aspects of our lives which are unworthy of Him, nothing we cannot pray about, talk to Him and so he may give it sense in a divine way. But isn't it sometimes convenient to believe our everyday life is unworthy of God? God does not care about what is in my plate, so I can eat all I want. It does not matter who is in my bed, so I can sleep with anyone! But there's nothing in our life God does not care about, even the shameful to us, and, as the Samaritan gradually understands, there is nothing to fear about it. Seeing Jesus is a prophet, she tries to talk to him about religious problems, but he comes back to speak about her life, because that is what interests him really. It is God's pleasure, and his joy to meet us in our poverty to help us to understand the desire of our soul, to help us to grow and to bless us. God is thirsty for our love, the creator of the universe asks for a drink of water!

Let's turn our daily life to God

During this Lent, perhaps we could try to put also “the unworthy” in the hands of God. We often worry, suffer and sin in very little things, so let's confide everything to Him, there is his will. In this text, Jesus points out that the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Let's try to make everything an opportunity to worship, or at least to grow in love, even tiredness, lack of patience, disappointments, feelings of anger, frustration, because even our sins can become steps to heaven if like the Samaritan we confess our poverty. The sexual misconduct of the Samaritan woman tells something about her quest for love in the eyes of God. Jesus does not judge her for her conquests, but helps her to understand what she longs for, what she is really thirsty for. No matter weaknesses and difficulties, no matter your sins, if in the end you will discover what it is really about.

“The well is deep”/ “The water I give them will become a spring of water”

The depth of our needs

But what is our desire about? The problem we have to deal with is that, most of the time, we reduce what we need in depth, and extend it in quantity. Our real great desire is denied for a multiplicity of little desires we can easily satisfy. This woman in our text is so hungry for love that she consumes men! But man after man, she is thirsty again since of course no one can answer her real demand. It can make us smile but don't we all act the same way? All our needs for news things, outings and entertainment? In a more affective way, don't we also try to be loved, more than we think of giving love? Aren't we waiting for approbation? Gratitude? This is an endless race, a well with no bottom. Because indeed the well is deep, our soul is deep since we are created to love and serve the Mighty One. Perhaps it is not a sin in itself to appreciate things and company, but it can lead us to sin if we forget what we are meant for, and our society denies absolutely spiritual needs and real destiny of mankind.

There is no end to our desires...as long as they are focused on ourselves

The problem is that we are always focused on our desires and needs and sometimes our everyday life can look like a perpetual quest for pleasure, with all the disappointment and frustration it provokes. I remember one day having seen a three year old little girl open the fridge and say: “Let's see what can please me”. Isn't it our way to enter into life : “Let's see what can please me”? And how many times our desires and needs are just centred on the pleasure we can get, denying others' needs and rights? The woman in our text, did your hear how she speaks about her man? “I have no husband” she says, as if the man was non existent, no need to mention him, he is not a person to her. Do we care about the real existence of others, their needs and desires at least half as much as we care about ours? And what's about God's desires for our life, is our food “to do his will”, as it is for Jesus?

Do we try to do something good with our desires?

So is the solution not to have desires and restrain our needs? The less, the better? Do we have to sacrifice our interests to those of others, for their pleasure and happiness? But Jesus does not deny our desires, because desire is good, the question is what are we going to do with it, where our desire goes. Desire should be what makes us come out of ourselves, as being in love turns us to the other one, but most of the time our desire just locks us in on ourselves, as water is trapped in a well. For the same reason, it is nonsense to try to satisfy all the whims of others. The question we should ask is not “What does this person want?”, but “What does he need?”, “What does he truly need?” as we should wonder what we really need (for our life), and not what we just want (now). Jesus does not answer the hunger for men of the Samaritan woman, but he gives her much more! God does not always give us what we want, because he knows what we need. Do we try to understand what we are really looking for, and do we help others to do the same? Desire should flow out like a spring, be the strength that draws us to life and relates us to others and to God.

“I have no husband” / “I am he” (The Messiah)

Do we recognize our loneliness and poverty?

The Samaritan woman recognizes the man she is with, the man she “has” as it is said, is nothing, no one to her. At the same time, she recognizes her loneliness and her poverty, her incapacity to build a relationship she considers as a possession. Do we admit that our possessions are nothing to us, that all we have, we will have to leave? Of course we know it but are we able to do without, even from time to time? Do we use to lend or to give what we have because we know it is not the response to what we truly need? In the same way, do we try to possess others, lover but also children, friends, or do we admit they cannot give a complete answer to our thirst for love and affection? This way, we can make room for God in our life and probably lead others to have better relationships with us. Convinced that nothing in the world, and no one in the world, can quench our thirst, we become free from a desperate search, in which we have to satisfy our hunger again and again. Pleasure is only about repetition, God wants to take us beyond ourselves to find something new.

Are we waiting for something from God or are we waiting for the beloved of our soul?

This means also not being too demanding of God for concrete things or even visible spiritual gifts. As Christians, we have to learn to love God for himself, even in hard times, when he does not seem to hear our prayers, even if our demands are fair, even if we do not pray for ourselves. Are we able, as was the Samaritan, to recognize the Messiah in a tired and thirsty man, who has nothing to draw water from the well? The setting of the scene near a well is very significant in Hebrew tradition of a love encounter (Remember Jacob and Rachel). The Samaritan meets at last the beloved, he is all that she needs. In our liturgy we say “The Lord is here”, do we believe He is here and He is all we need, or do we wonder with the Hebrews of the first reading if “the Lord among us or not”, meaning “is he able to respond to our thirst, or not”? Well, let's perhaps appreciate for a while our feeling of being thirsty, let's make room for the Lord during this Lent. Let's try not to satisfy our appetite as it comes and goes, to tell God, in a concrete way, He is the one we really long for, the one we really need.

Jesus is still thirsty

It can be helpful to us to remember that there is another passage in John's Gospel where Jesus says he is thirsty: on the cross. Jesus died being thirsty. And we see, in the passage we just read, how overwhelmed he seems to be by his meeting with the Samaritan woman. I think he realizes the desire each man and woman has for God, even the non Jew. Are we as concerned, as Jesus was, to help our neighbour to meet God, not in having theological discussions, like Jesus who tries to avoid abstractive questions, but by listening to others, no judging them and making them grow, understanding their real search? Is our quest for God a personal concern or are we eager to share our faith with others? Does it cause us pain to meet people who seem far from God and who do not find the meaning of their lives? Well, perhaps if we do not feel this pain, we should ask God to give it to us, because it is this pain Jesus experiences in our passage and will endure on the cross. How beautiful it would be if our stronger desire and thirst was to share our joy of knowing the Saviour, as it at last the desire of the Samaritan woman!

Conclusion

I was wondering what were Jesus' feelings at the end of our passage. Perhaps he feels overwhelmed discovering his mission was not only for Jews, but for each man and woman, a crowd as large as the fields stretching as far as the eyes can see. Perhaps also Jesus feels overwhelmed realizing that, as the Samaritan woman told him, he has nothing to draw, to force the door of our heart. He will give us a spring, but we have to offer a drink of water. The Samaritan woman opened a little of her heart, so he could help her, but how often are we so focused on ourselves with our desires, our needs and preoccupations that he just cannot give us anything, or so much less than he would like to? We have to open ourselves and to offer ourselves day after day in our more concrete lives. At the end of our passage, the Samaritan woman “leave the water jar” and we are called to do the same: leaving the preoccupations we have for ourselves, the little we try to get for our own use, to be able to dive into the spring.

So let me leave you with a few questions we can reflect on to “drop the jar and enter the spring”...

• Are we looking for immediate satisfaction of our desires, or do we accept being needy?
• Are we always trying to fill our time, or do we admit the emptiness of our life from time to time?
• Are we rushing to everything we can have for free, or are we able to accept missed opportunities, and even to let them go for the benefit of others?
• Is it me who always chooses what I want to do, when and how, or am I able to hear the needs of people around me?
• Am I able to give things I use and like for the benefit of another person, or do I only give what I do not desire any more?