March 12th 2023. Third Sunday of Lent
GOSPEL: Jn 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio
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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel
GOSPEL: Jn 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,
near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon. A woman of Samaria 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,
“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—
Jesus answered and said to her, “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 said to him,
“Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep;
where then can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself
with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her,
“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.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water.
“I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain;
but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand;
we worship what we understand,
because salvation is from the Jews.
But 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.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him,
“I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ;
when he comes, he will tell us everything.”
Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him.
When the Samaritans came to him,
they invited him to stay with them;
and he stayed there two days.
Many more began to believe in him because of his word,
and they said to the woman,
“We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the saviour of the world.”
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
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.
ALTERNATIVE HOMILY
Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he is thirsty. But his real thirst is that she would receive life from him, the “living water” that he longs to give each and every one of us. This is how it always is with God. When he asks for something from us - our obedience, our trust - it is only because he wants to give us a thousand times more. In fact, he says to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God . . .” God thirst for us, but where or how can we encounter him? Not in a particular place but with an attitude of trust and intimacy. The story of this woman with her five husbands reveals that she had tried to resolve her incompleteness through relationships that ultimately failed. Following her encounter with Jesus, however, this woman begins to drink from the authentic source of life: relationship with the true God. We need this blessed period of Lent in order to make the same leap of quality ourselves! It is time for us to start seeking the true God, to overcome our fixations with self-referential relationships that do not resolve our existential woes. It is time to give up the useless search for illusory sources of life. These false sources of “life” are generally objects that we accumulate, desires that torture us, or fixations that alienate us from what is good and true. The real God seeks our heart, our spirit, the deepest truth of our being. In short, he wants you and me.
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