Jesus is source of the life-giving water of salvation

Third Sunday of Lent (A)

Our Gospel reading this Sunday is the well-known story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. In this passage, St. John provides a theologically and spiritually rich commentary on the person of Jesus and the process of coming to salvation. Placed on this Third Sunday of Lent, this Gospel is intended to whet the thirst of those preparing for the life-giving water of baptism, and to remind those already baptized of the ultimate source of their strength, the streams of life-giving water already flowing within them.
St. John uses the details of this encounter to teach us about Jesus and ourselves. We learn, first of all, that Jesus is the Source of the life-giving water of salvation. In the Ancient Near East, water was a truly precious commodity, literally a matter of life and death. Amidst the barren desert, life could spring up and survive only in places that had close access to water. As they traveled toward and throughout the Promised Land, the People of Israel saw the hand of God directly intervening to place wells of fresh water along their path. Their prophets often used the image of living, flowing water to foreshadow the time of the Messiah, an age when the multitudes would bask in a feast of plenty (see Isaiah 12:3, Joel 4:18, etc.). The very presence of a well was seen as a sign of God’s providential love for his people.
It is no wonder, then, that Jesus uses such a well as the setting for his offer of salvation to the Samaritan woman. To the woman’s initial lack of understanding, Jesus exclaimed, “If only you knew the gift of God . . .” ( Jn 4:10). He uses his physical thirst as an opportunity to draw forth a thirst for faith from the woman. Having asked her for a drink, he tells her that he himself is the font of living water, water which will satisfy not merely for hours, but for eternity. At first the woman does not see beyond the physical, but she still begs for such water, hoping at least to avoid the drudgery of her walks to the well. By the end of the encounter, Jesus has so deepened her faith that she is able to testify to him as “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” ( Jn 4:14), the source of all salvation.
Next St. John tells us that it is Jesus who reaches out to us even amidst our sins. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman to return with her husband. Embarrassed, she told him a half-truth -- that she had no husband. Jesus saw more deeply into her life and observed that “you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband” ( Jn 4:18). It is significant to note that Jesus did not then chastise or send her away. He had come to save sinners, and so if she was willing to believe and repent, she too could be the recipient of his life-giving water. St. Paul offers the most striking commentary on this offer of salvation to sinners: “It is precisely in this that God proves his love for us-- that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” ( Rom 5:8). In fact, our Second Reading this Sunday gives us an insight into why this is so—“[Jesus] saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design” ( 2 Tm 1:9a); Jesus saves us not because of what we are like but because of what he is like.

In this encounter, we also learn that Jesus himself is the foundation of all true worship. He explains to the woman that “the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem . . . the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth . . .” ( Jn 4:21,23a). Jesus himself was the Truth, the privileged instance of the Father’s self-manifestation. Access to the Father could be had only through him; such access is enabled by the Holy Spirit, the “Gift of God” that Jesus bestows upon all his followers. True worship of God is not bounded by time or place, but rather is open to all those who gather in the power and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, this Gospel sheds light on the proper human response to Jesus. Sinful though she was, the Samaritan woman remained open to Jesus’ prompts, allowing herself to be drawn more and more deeply into faith. Jesus gives her the insight to progress from seeing him as first a Jew (an adversary), then as a polite stranger, a prophet, and finally as “truly the savior of the world” ( Jn 4:42). Because she remained open to Jesus and trusted in him, he was able to draw her to salvation, to open the tap to the life-giving water for her. May each of us imitate that profound openness to Jesus, allowing him to call us away from our sins and back to faith in him, the true font of all salvation.
Msgr. Fell is a Scripture scholar and director, diocesan Office for Priest Personnel