March 19^th 2017. THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

Gospel: Matthew 4:5-42

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Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL John 4:5-42

Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the well. It was about the sixth hour When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink'. His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, 'What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?' - Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied:

'If you only knew what God is offering
and who it is that is saying to you:
Give me a drink,
you would have been the one to ask,
and he would have given you living water'.

'You have no bucket, sir,' she answered 'and the well is deep: how could you get this living water?
 Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?' Jesus replied

'Whoever drinks this water
will get thirsty again;
but anyone who drinks the water that I shall give
will never be thirsty again:
the water that I shall give
will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life'.

'Sir,' said the woman 'give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.' 'Go and call your husband' said Jesus to her 'and come back here.' The woman answered, 'I have no husband'. He said to her, 'You are right to say, "I have no husband"; for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.' 'I see you are a prophet, sir' said the woman. 'Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.' Jesus said:

'Believe me, woman, the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You worship what you do not know;
we worship what we do know:
for salvation comes from the Jews.
But the hour will come - in fact it is here already –
when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:
that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.
God is spirit,
and those who worship
must worship in spirit and truth.'

The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah - that is, Christ - is coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything'. 'I who am speaking to you,' said Jesus 'I am he.'

At this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a woman, though none of them asked, 'What do you want from her?' or, 'Why are you talking to her?' The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people.  'Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?' This brought people out of the town and they started walking towards him.

Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, 'Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said, 'I have food to eat that you do not know about'. So the disciples asked one another, 'Has someone been bringing him food?' But Jesus said:

'My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.
Have you not got a saying: Four months and then the harvest?
Well, I tell you: Look around you, look at the fields;
already they are white, ready for harvest!
Already the reaper is being paid his wages,
already he is bringing in the grain for eternal life,
and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.
For here the proverb holds good: one sows, another reaps;
I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for.
Others worked for it; and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.'

Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman's testimony when she said, 'He told me all I have ever done', so, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman, 'Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world'.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Prayer is an encounter between the thirst of humanity for God and the thirst of God for humanity. The meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well illustrates this encounter very well. Jesus asks the woman at the well for a drink. What kind of thirst is Jesus experiencing here? The thirst to satisfy her deepest thirst! He goes on to say to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God, you would ask him and he would give you living water.” We tend to think that God wants something from us. We complain at his request for our obedience, at his insistence that we trust in him. God appears to be asking for something when he demands our obedience and trust, but in reality it is through our obedience and trust that he wants to satisfy our deepest thirst. We tend to make our own needs absolute. When we have a necessity of some sort, we become fixated with the satisfaction of that necessity. If we could manage to forget our own needs for a moment and turn to God at these times, then we would experience grace of an incredible sort. The woman at the well is thirsty for physical water, but Jesus encourages her to open herself to her more profound thirst for living water. It would be wonderful if, during this season of Lent, we could forget our physical wants for a moment and open ourselves to our need to be satiated profoundly by Jesus. We would discover then that the place of real encounter with Jesus is not some select “holy place”. The place of intimate encounter with Jesus in spirit and truth is in this attitude of receptiveness to the self-giving of God.

The first reading speaks of a thirst that is satisfied by the Lord in an extraordinary way

In the first reading we hear how the people of Israel began to complain about the thirst they were experiencing in the desert. They had complained earlier about the lack of food. If we examine the text, we discover that it was only three months since they had experienced the wonders of the Lord in bringing them out of Egypt. Despite this, their memories are short and they have lost faith in the providence of God. In the ensuing crisis, Moses fears that he will be stoned if he does not find water soon. The Lord responds by directing them to a rock from which water flows. With this background theme of water and physical thirst we approach the Gospel story, which deals with different types of thirst and different ways to satiate that thirst.

God thirsts for us and we thirst for him. This is a story about the encounter between both thirsts

The catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that prayer is the place where the thirst of humanity encounters the thirst of God. But in what sense can God experience thirst? Let us first consider the nature of human thirst. Thirst is a condition that is much more critical than hunger. We become dehydrated much more quickly than we starve. In the kind of desert areas where the history of the Bible revolves, thirst is an issue of acute importance. In the Gospel story, the woman comes to the well looking for water. But she meets Jesus who does not offer her a drink. Instead he asks her for a drink. Then, curiously, he offers her a live-giving water of a completely different kind. If we read the full version of this long Gospel text, then we discover that neither Jesus nor the woman actually drink water during their encounter! The woman leaves her water jar at the well and goes off to tell the townspeople about Jesus. She is now utterly focussed on a different kind of thirst that Jesus has awoken in her.

God’s thirst is a thirst to bestow graces upon us

In the first reading, God provides the people with water from a new source. And that is how it is with all of us. God has a different water to give us. But we only discover this water when we are confronted by God’s thirst for us. It was Jesus who asked this woman in the first place to quench his thirst. And what is his thirst? His thirst is the desire to quench our spiritual thirst. The Samaritan woman thinks she has encountered someone who wants something from her, but then she discovers that Jesus is someone who only wants to give. This is an experience that we have one thousand times with God. When it seems that God wants something from us, we discover that what he truly wants is to give. We tend to think that we are doing something for God when we are obedient to him, or when we trust in his name. But it is at that very moment that the Lord is doing something for us.

At moments of necessity, we make our own needs absolute. These are the times we should forget our needs, open ourselves to God and obtain satisfaction of a much profounder sort

It often happens that at a moment of critical personal necessity, we tend to become fixated with our own needs, obsessed with our own wants. But if we try to open ourselves to the giving of God at those moments, then we will experience satiation of a dramatic sort. Sometimes these times of desperate necessity can be moments of incredible grace. Jesus utters a phrase in this Gospel that is of great importance: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water.” Do you really know the gifts that the Lord wants to give? Do you really appreciate the generosity of God? If we knew someone of incredibility creativity and goodness who asked us to come with him on a great adventure somewhere, then we would want to go. That person asks us to go with him, but in reality it is we who benefit from the experience. That is how God is. When God asks us something, it is a request to open ourselves to his generosity. And that is the experience of the Samaritan woman. She was asked by Jesus to open herself to what he wanted to give, and then she encountered the truth.

Where do we encounter God in an intimate way? Not in a place but in an attitude that opens itself to the Lord, allowing him to satisfy our deepest thirst.

One of the central lines of this text concerns the place where we encounter and adore God. The Greek work for “adore” contains the word for “kiss”. Adoration entails approaching God with an intimate attitude. Where can we encounter God in an intimate way? This Gospel tells us that we encounter God in such a way not in a place but in an attitude. The thirst of this woman is satiated in an unexpected way and in an unexpected place. The Samaritan woman has a chequered history and perhaps that is why she goes to draw water at the unconventional hour of midday. She has already had five husbands and maybe she wished to avoid the judgemental glances of other women in the town. But now she encounters a husband of a different sort and an intimacy of a new kind. In a blessed moment she makes the transition from being fixated with her own needs to trusting in the Lord who is capable of satisfying all of her deepest longings. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we too, in a blessed moment during this time of Lent, could make the transition from being obsessed with the satisfaction of our own appetites to the condition of trusting in the Lord who only thirsts for our good? If we could open ourselves to the Lord in this way for a moment, then we would begin to encounter him in an intimate manner, in spirit and truth, an encounter of the kiss that the Lord wants to give us, an encounter with our true and deepest spouse, an experience of a food that we have never tasted before, the taste of a water that satisfies the thirst at the core of our being.