We are now into the third week of Lent. All the good intentions we began the season with for prayer, fasting and almsgiving may be holding true, or yet again, they may have become a little wobbly. This is where the liturgy can feed and strengthens us in our human frailty. St Benedict calls the season of Lent, a joyful one. I must admit when we began the season, I would not describe my heart as particularly joyful. The weather outside was miserable, there had been lots of coughs and colds doing the round making the community sound a little hoarse. The sopranos were sounding like altos and altos like bases and others went in for contemplative silence. Then Lent began and it has been a time of real grace and blessing and I have discovered anew why St Benedict calls it a joyful season.

The season is a journey begun on Ash Wednesday and we travellers spend the first few days getting ready for our six-week trip. On the first Sunday of Lent, we set off into the desert. They are dry and hot places and there are quite a few hurdles to be crossed before we reach our journey’s end, Easter.

In the second week we get a ‘little’ Easter, a little oasis in the desert. We are given the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus leads the three disciples, Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, where Jesus is transfigured before them. He is talking with Moses and Elijah. In Luke’s version of the Transfiguration, we are told that Jesus was discussing with the two his passing which would be accomplished in Jerusalem (Luke 9:28-36). We know that the road Jesus travelled brought much suffering and death but then came the Resurrection.

In our journey to Easter, we are faced by our own challenges. Each day of this season our focus is very much on the call to live out the Paschal Mystery in our own lives. The times when we are called to deny ourselves something, which for some can feel like a real death, is a letting go of something that seems very precious, but like the disciples at the Transfiguration, we must focus our eyes on Jesus and Listen to him.  It is by doing this that Jesus shows us we are changed.

On the third Sunday of Lent, the Gospel focus is a change of gear, especially in Year A. Over the next few Sundays, we hear from the Gospel of John. His Gospel has a depth, which is quite different from the other three, synoptic, Gospels. This Sunday, we are given the beautiful story of the woman at the well in John 4. It is such a lively, colourful and rich chapter with so many themes given to us, but where is it taking us in our Lenten journey?

We meet the Samaritan woman coming to draw water in the middle of day. The time of day tells us that she is someone who really does not wish to meet anyone. She is in hiding. To collect water at a time when the heat is at its height is madness.  The woman is brought up short; she meets Jesus, a Jew, and immediately her hackles are up. Jews and Samaritans at this time did not like each other. Jews considered Samaritans heretics because they worshipped on Mount Gerizim and not in Jerusalem and were not faithful to the Jewish Law.

Jesus will have immediately sensed her animosity towards him but still he opens the conversation by asking her for a drink. I pause here. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink. He was thirsty. My immediate thoughts go to that moment when Jesus is nailed to the cross and having been through so much, he cries out, I thirst (John 19:28). During crucifixion, a person becomes dehydrated, so I link it here to this story of the Samaritan woman. Jesus is thirsty and asks the woman for a drink. Is he really wanting physical water or is it a spiritual thirst? Jesus longs to draw all humankind to himself (John 12:32). He sees this woman, he knows her, he knows her needs, her heart. We discover during their conversation that she has been married five times and now she is with another man. Jesus knows she is not happy; in fact, I would say she is in a bad place. The woman has been alienated from her community, an outcast seeking peace and happiness. Jesus is showing her the way back.

How often do we feel alienated from God because of what we have said or done. In last week’s Gospel the voice from the cloud said to us. This is my beloved Son, listen to him. We are being shown the way back.

The Samaritan woman in our story is at the well to collect water. This is very practical and necessary to live; we all need water. It is a necessary chore. Jesus is going deeper than drinking water. How often do we get caught up in this world’s needs to the neglect of our life in Christ. Do we realise we are slowly dying of thirst for the living God and how much God wants us to drink of this water?

In this Lenten season we are reminded of our baptism, and we hold in prayer the many who are preparing to be received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. During the Vigil, we will all renew our baptismal promises. Baptism is the water of life, when we are taken into the waters and washed cleaned of all sin. It was at this moment we each became a temple of the Holy Spirit with the Spirit’s presence dwelling within each of us. This is what Jesus refers to in his dialogue with the Samaritan women:

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again’ (John 4:13-14).

We were given the most precious gift in the waters of baptism – the seed of faith. It is there within each one waiting to be nourished, watered, in ordered to grow strong. We are all reborn in baptism.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

In this moment of encounter with Jesus, he is promising her this gift – a gift to one so weighed down by her sins and passions. He meets her in her deepest needs. He promises her new life, and this will flow from the side of Jesus at his crucifixion.

One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water (John 19:34).

We, too, can still draw water from the grace of our own baptism in our lives lived today. We can come to the waters of our salvation drawing joyfully from the spring that lives there (cf. Isaiah 12:3). Lent is a joyful season; St Benedict was not wrong.

I will finish with a quote from Pope Francis:

The water that gives eternal life was poured into our hearts on the day of our Baptism; then God transformed and filled us with his grace. But we may have forgotten this great gift that we received or reduced it to a merely official statistic; and perhaps we seek ‘wells’ whose water does not quench our thirst. When we forget the true water, we go in search of wells that do not have clean water. Thus, this Gospel passage actually concerns us! Not just the Samaritan woman, but us. Jesus speaks to us as he does to the Samaritan woman. Of course, we already know him, but perhaps we have not yet encountered him personally. We know who Jesus is, but perhaps we have not encountered him personally, spoken with him, and we still have not recognized him as our Saviour.   

(Pope Francis, Angelus 19 March 2017)

Andrea Savage

3 March 2026