“What do we have to fear when we have such a proof, such an experience of God’s love? How could we doubt God’s presence when the Spirit has been poured out into our hearts?” So says Saint Paul.
On its Lenten pilgrimage, today the Church tarries near Jacobs well in order to meditate on one of the richest and most enduring passages in the Gospels. One might well think that this Gospel speaks of the waters of Baptism, especially to the Catechumenate, and surely it does, but it speaks not only of that but of much more. The biblical background of this episode is evocative of the patriarchs and full of charm. In this region, Jacob set up camp and an altar to “El, the God of Israel,” after his encounter with his brother Esau. A whole tradition of prayer and meditation was attached to Mount Gerizim, prior to the rivalry that arose later between this high place and the Jerusalem Temple. Finally, and especially—because today’s readers are also particularly sensitive to it—the theme of sources, wells, cool waters springing up is visible all through the narrative. This is certainly a poetic theme, often developed in popular Near Eastern literature; but it is also evocative for anyone who is familiar—even to a small degree—with the Bible. The Garden of Eden is watered by a stream that “beyond there….. divides and becomes four branches” (Gen 2:10). Throughout all biblical narratives, the journeys of the patriarchs and their families led them from well to well, which they saluted with shouts of joy. Wells and watering sites are places of meeting—or envy—in an arid land.
The problem with water was crucial throughout the whole journey of the people in the First reading. They expected it to well up by God’s grace. Similarly, the Psalms speaks several times of the power of God, on whom the gift of water depends. Of course, water, spring, and well, came to be images of what gives life and justice: the Law, wisdom, the renewal announced by the prophets for messianic times, and in the New Testament the Spirit who vivifies everything.
Finally, a still more attentive examination of John’s account allows us to faintly discern implicit reminiscences of what we call “the legend of the well,” gift of God that accompanied the Hebrews during their travels and the waters of which were overflowing before Jacob. This legend was more and more embellished in Jewish tradition and exploited in rabbinical commentaries called ‘midrash’ (explanation) and ‘Targum’ (interpretation).
In summary, the Gospel of the Samaritan woman is composed as a tapestry in which, in order to understand well the main scene, one must not neglect either the warp on which it is woven or the symbolism of the details. We must tarry and consider the background and foreground. Only then can we embrace in one single look the ensemble of a composition whose meaning and wealth remain inexhaustible. This is one of the Gospel passages that do not cease to reveal new perspectives, new depths. We discover these with wonder in the course of our meditation and contemplation of these texts, whatever the way we approach them.
A first reading of the Gospel of the Samaritan woman could focus on the behaviour of the woman at Sychar in order to follow the unpredictable itinerary that led her to faith and caused her to draw after her “many of the Samaritans.”
At the point of departure—as so often happens— there is a chance encounter on an often-travelled road, in the course of fulfilling a daily task usually uneventfully accomplished. What is more unremarkable than a weary man sitting at the well and asking for a drink of water? Of course, it is against custom that a Jew should address a Samaritan woman, even to ask for an urgent service. Everything could have stopped there. The woman would have gone home and told of the surprising behaviour of the Jew. “He must have been dying of thirst to ask me for a drink, me, a Samaritan; of course I didn’t have the heart to refuse him a little water.” But this stranger does not say what one expected: a banal word. He speaks of himself giving living water, although he has no bucket for drawing from the deep well: “who is he, or who does he think he is? Since Jacob, the marvel of the waters overflowing by themselves has never occurred again.” The traveler seems not to have heard this remark and continues, “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.”
“Why doesn’t this word just make me shrug my shoulders? Why don’t I hurry to draw water, give him a drink, and flee as fast as I can from this man talking so strangely? What holds me here, my pitcher in hand? When I catch myself saying, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water,’ I’m not certain I speak only in irony. I feel a sort of unrest, a curiosity, I don’t recognise.”
When the conversation turns more personal—“Go call your husband and bring him here…I do not have husband…You are right says Jesus…..” The woman is really troubled. But perhaps it is still possible to evade by asking a big, general question on a subject—controversial, but less compromising—of theology, of morals, of liturgy. However, Jesus is one of those interlocutors not easily distracted. He calls forth from the innermost depths of hearts certitudes hitherto hidden: “I know the Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ; when he comes, he will tell us all things.” And then the decisive revelation, “Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’”
The chore of getting water is forgotten, the pitcher left on the ground. It is impossible not to run and share the joy of this incredible encounter with others: “Come to see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
We need the testimony of those who have met the Lord. However, if, in our turn, we believe, it is because “we have heard it for ourselves” and because we have personally recognised in him the Saviour of the world.
This reading of the Gospel of the Samaritan woman is not reserved only for those who are preparing for baptism. All of us must, as long as we live, in one way or another, travel at least along some of the stages of this faith itinerary. There are many wells on our road. Sometimes, near one of them, a stranger is waiting to ask for a drink. Maybe this person is sent by God to help us recollect ourselves and rediscover the face of the Lord, that we have somewhat forgotten. Is it not the Lord speaking to us when the word of God is proclaimed in the assembly where he gives himself as food to his people.
This Lenten journey gives the Church at large and each believer the double experience of a thirst no well on earth can quench and the water that springs up from the heart into eternal life. The liturgy is a privileged place where the living waters well up, abundant and varied, when the word of God is proclaimed. The Spirit awakens adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving in believers’ hearts. It allows us to live our baptism, where we became children of God and the living waters were poured over us. The Lord gives himself to his people as food under the signs of bread and wine. But it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that these life-giving waters given to us can spring up.
“Lord, you are indeed the saviour of the world; give me living water, so that I may never get thirsty.”
