Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 23. 2025. Gospel of St. John 4:5-42. Theme: Streams of Living Water
Today’s Gospel presents us with an account of the longest one-on-one conversation that Jesus had with another person during His public ministry. It’s the story of a deeply wounded woman coming to faith in Jesus, of receiving the gift of Living Water which is the grace of God that brings her new life in Christ, and then transforms her into an instrument for inviting others to discover and claim this gift for themselves.
The story opens with Jesus, who is tired and thirsty, encountering a woman of Samaria at a well where He is seeking some rest in the shade. She comes at noon because she knows that the other village women will not be there. They always carry out the heavy task of drawing water in the cool of the morning or the breeze of the evening. She was, you see, a woman marked with a scarlet letter due to her multi-amorous history. When Jesus starts up a chat with the lady at the well He is violating two huge cultural taboos of Judaism: Jews do not speak to Samaritans who were considered to be their sworn enemies. And Jewish men do not speak to strange women in public. Ever. By doing these things, Jesus is ignoring centuries of prejudice and discrimination. But then we know now that this is "vintage Jesus"! That was simply who He was and how He acted.
As the story unfolds, the woman gradually opens up to Jesus and He, in turn, gradually reveals His true identity to her. Notice that the various ways she addresses Jesus show that she is undergoing a deepening process in her understanding of who He is. Initially, she calls him “Sir’” as she would any man. Next, she thinks of Him as something more than an ordinary man and calls him a “prophet”. Finally, a light clicks on inside her and she hails Jesus as “the Christ”' (which means “the Messiah” in Greek). In response, Jesus goes one step further and reveals Himself as the source of a mysterious ‘Living Water’ (which is a symbol for God’s life-giving life-changing grace). He knows that this Living Water, this grace of God, is what she really needs. It’s what she has been unknowingly yearning and searching for in her multiple relationships with five different men.
As a brief aside, we can see at this point of the story that the Samaritan woman has been "looking for love in all the wrong places" (as a famous country-western song puts it.) I am sure we all know those who have done or are doing the same thing even now. And the wrong places where we so often look for love and happiness can be in many other things besides people and relationships. The accumulation of wealth and property, owning luxuriant houses, wearing only brand-name fashions, running ourselves ragged for professional successes, and feverishly exercising for a youthful and fit physique as an antidote to aging, are all things that that people run after in our quest for love and happiness. At first sight these things seem to be the answer, but after attaining some or many of these goals, our broken hearts remain wounded, our interior desires remain unsatisfied, and our deeper longings continue to cry out for fulfillment. And so, we keep on searching….that is, until we really meet Jesus up close and personal as did the Samaritan woman.
Now back to the story. The narrative is briefly interrupted when Jesus’ disciples return and discover Him talking with a Samaritan woman. They were very surprised and probably scandalized! But not one of them asks why because they have learned by now to expect the unexpected when it comes to Jesus! In the meantime, the woman who by then had begun to be filled with the streams of Living Water, races back to her village filled with excitement over the holy man whom she has met. She shouts out to her neighbors whom she had previously been avoiding, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have done. Could this be the Christ?” What a twist in the story! What a change of events! The once rejected and scorned woman has now become a bold messenger of God’s love to her village. Having been introduced to Jesus by the witness of the woman, her neighbors now come to believe in Him for themselves and acclaim Him to be the long-awaited Savior of the world.
Our Gospel today is a story full of hopefulness and joy. It’s like a preview for each one of us about the new life that can be ours through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We just need to follow the example of that Samaritan woman by spending time with Jesus in honest and mutual dialogue speaking simply and clearly from our hearts. Like her, we need to humbly acknowledge our sinfulness and allow Christ to heal our woundedness. We need to thirst as she did for union with Him, which is made possible for us today through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Holy Communion is our special one-on-one time with Christ and through our frequent and meaningful reception of this Blessed Sacrament we can experience a gradual and ever-growing personal transformation. Like the Samaritan woman, we can introduce Christ to those with whom we live, work and socialize, sharing with them who Jesus is and what a difference He has made in our lives. Then through our witness they, too, can receive the refreshing streams of Living Water by coming to know Christ for themselves, placing their trust in Him as the Savior of their souls!
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