Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent. March 12, 2023, Gospel of St. John 4:5-42. Theme: Springs of Living Water!
In today’s gospel St. John takes us to a section of Israel called Samaria, a place inhabited by a people who were considered to be heretics and traitors to the Covenant God made with Moses. The Jewish people despised the Samaritans as morally unclean and spiritually unworthy of God’s blessings. And it’s there in that godforsaken land that we meet a woman who is considered to be unclean and unworthy even by her own townsfolk. She is an outcast among a people who are themselves considered outcasts. You cannot get much lower than that in the mind of the 1st century Jews who first heard this gospel story. And this is precisely what St. John wants us to keep in mind as the story unfolds.
We are told that the woman went to Jacob’s well at noon. Now, this would strike the hearers of the story as extremely odd because they all knew that women go to wells at dawn or dusk so that they can escape the intense heat of the desert sun. There is only one reason why this outcast woman would go to the well at noon: to avoid the condemning stares and shunning silence of her peers. But what made her such an outcast? It was her reputation. She was living with a man who was 5th in a string of lovers who had replaced her original husband and so she is considered by the village women to be someone who is beyond the reach of God.
It seems that St. John wants us to understand that her life was as empty and dry as the water-jug she was carrying; that she was desperately thirsty for love and acceptance. Her spiritual poverty and her emotional needs were so great that she was willing to compromise herself into situations which she knew were morally wrong. Who among us can’t relate to that in one way or another in our lives?
And this is where St. John wants us to “connect the dots”, so to speak, and realize that this Samaritan woman represents each one of us, both you and me.
She stands for all who sense an emptiness inside themselves that only God can fill. She represents each person who, perhaps even without realizing it, is looking for love in all the wrong places. She is a symbol of each person who stands in need of inner healing and real wholeness, the kind that brings us true inner peace and serenity. St. John wants us to put ourselves in her place and know that just as Jesus reached out to her, so also He reaches out to us. Just as Jesus knew all the details of her past, so He knows all of ours as well. And as with the Samaritan woman, He doesn’t care what we were or what we have been. He is interested in what we can become. He wants to free us from whatever it is that is holding us bound in mind, body or spirit because He is the Savior who has come to set us free.
St. John wants us to know that a real transformation of our hearts and lives is possible if we follow the example of the Samaritan woman. If we are willing to face the truth about ourselves, acknowledge our wrong-doings and bring our inner wounds to Jesus for healing then we, too, can drink His Living Water and experience a renewal of our hearts. This Living Water is a symbol of the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, as St. Paul says in our second reading. And when we become consciously aware of this unconditional love God that has for us and trust in Jesus as our Merciful Savior, then the floodgates of Living Water are opened up and the grace of the Holy Spirit can flow freely within us, carrying out His work of transformation.
We see this wonderful change happening to the Samaritan woman. As she comes to understand more clearly who Jesus really is and sincerely asks Him for the Living Water, it starts to gush through her and transform her. Recall that before she encountered Jesus she went to the well at noon in order to avoid her neighbors. But after experiencing the personal love that Christ has for her she is filled with joy and runs off to go to the very same people whom she had been avoiding! She is no longer bound and defined by her sins. She is no longer preoccupied with what others might think about her. She no longer treats herself as an outcast because she has tasted the Living Water of God’s love and it has begun to change her. She now becomes an apostle, a missionary, an evangelizer for Christ, eager to share with her neighbors the Good News that she has found the Messiah who can make life worth living again!
St. John wants us to connect this Gospel story with our Baptism because that is when we were first given the Living Water of the Holy Spirit. But Baptism was just the start and our whole Christian lives are meant to be watered by the grace of God through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us! So we need to consciously deepen our devotion to Him and open our hearts more fully to the Spirit Who has been given to us. And then the flow of Living Water can start gushing through us and we, too, like the Samaritan woman, will come to discover that we no longer need to quench our thirst in the old ways that we had been doing. Instead, we will find ourselves more and more drawn by an inner desire to satisfy our thirst and find our joy in the bottomless Fountain of God’s love which springs forth from the Heart of Jesus.
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