Introduction

After finishing the Gospel of Luke, I began this month by reading its companion volume, the Acts of the Apostles. However, with Solemn Profession rapidly approaching (it is this week) I turned to one of my favourite books of the Bible – the Gospel of John. For this post rather than give an overview of my lectio over the last couple of weeks I am going to focus on chapter 4 – the meeting between Jesus and a Samaritan woman by a well. Much can be said concerning this episode, and indeed many words have been written and preached about it. I am going to write about just one way in which the text spoke to me, at this time.

Lectio

Jesus is travelling with a group of his followers. They go to buy food, and he sits down, alone, by a well in the middle of the day.

I am always filled with awe at Jesus’ humility at this point for his acceptance of the trials and tribulations of our human state. He is divine and yet he walks long distances through the countryside and becomes tired, hungry, thirsty. He is sharing in our human nature at its gritty and basic level – accepting everything about us. It puts me in mind of the famous hymn in St Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave (Philippians 2:7).

I linger here and ponder on his great love for us – that he would do this, join us here on the earth, be one of us.

A woman comes to the well to draw water and Jesus says to her, ‘Give me a drink.’

The Lord of the universe is putting himself in the position of a supplicant, of a beggar, asking for the drink. As the woman soon points out, he has no bucket and cannot draw water for himself; he is needy and helpless. St John draws out the irony of the situation when Jesus says:

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 (4:10).

For me, this too is an important place to linger. Jesus asks the woman for a drink. What is he asking of me? The Gospel of Matthew tells us:

In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me (Matthew 25:40).

So, at one level, I see in this passage an invitation to serve Christ by serving my sisters in community. But there are deeper resonances here. In the crucifixion scene in John’s Gospel Jesus cries out:

I am thirsty (19:28).

Again, this is interpreted at different levels. At the most superficial level, it is taken as an expression of biological need, and someone presents Jesus with a sponge soaked in vinegar. John also points out that Jesus uttered the cry in order to fulfil the prophecy:

In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink (Psalms 21[22]:15).

My patron, St Thérèse, noted a third, spiritual level to this cry. Jesus is crying out with thirst for our love. In one of her poems, she writes

You, great God, whom all heaven adores… Your sweet voice implores me at each hour, You cry to me: ‘I am thirsty… I am thirsty for love!…’ (PN 31 31 May 1896).

Saint Teresa of Calcutta also took up this theme. In a meditation drawn from her writings entitled ‘I thirst’, it says:

I Thirst for You. Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe My love for you. I THIRST FOR YOU. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you – that is how precious you are to Me. (I thirst, Missionaries of Charity Fathers).

The thought of Jesus’ love for me is a lot for me to take, but I can just sit there, and hear him cry out to me, ‘I thirst for you’.

When I do move on, I hear again Jesus’ offer to give the woman living water:

… 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 (4:14).

This true life that the Lord offers us is a motif that recurs throughout the Gospel of John. However, I am struck by the reciprocity of the two requests – Jesus asks the woman for a drink, she asks him for living water. His gifts to us are so great in return for small efforts, small gestures on our part. This living water is the source of the true and eternal life that we are called to live, and that comes to us through the Paschal mystery, Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection.

Pope Francis wrote:

The wounded side of Christ continues to pour forth that stream which is never exhausted, never passes away, but offers itself time and time again to all those who wish to love as he did. For his love alone can bring about a new humanity (Dilexit nos 219).

Prayer

Using the words of Pope Francis:

I ask our Lord Jesus Christ to grant that his Sacred Heart may continue to pour forth the streams of living water that can heal the hurt we have caused, strengthen our ability to love and serve others, and inspire us to journey together towards a just, solidary and fraternal world (Dilexit nos 220).