A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
In today’s Gospel for the third Sunday of Lent, Jesus encounters the woman at the well alone as the disciples go off to town to buy food. He asks the woman, a Samaritan, for a drink. She says, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Jesus says to her in reply, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman’s eyes open to the realization that Jesus is a prophet and something greater. Her thirst for the living water grows as she sees that Jesus thirsts for her faith. When the disciples arrive, she leaves the well behind and returns to town, saying to the people: “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?” As a result, John tells us, many Samaritans from that town began to believe in Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified. With a little act of testifying, not even in full confidence, the woman brings Christ to the people. And after Jesus stayed with some of them, they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”
God, I want to take in the fullness of today’s readings. Help me understand that just as the Israelites thirsted for water in the desert, the woman at the well also thirsted. Moses struck the rock, and water flowed from it after the Israelites tested you, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” And from the water that flowed, the Israelites would drink again and again. The woman at the well opened her eyes to Jesus’ divinity, testifying, “Could he possibly be the Christ?” I see in myself the same tentative faith as the woman at the well, I drink from the living water of your Son; through him, I drink from the spring of water welling up to eternal life. With the Gospel acclamation I pray, “Lord, you are truly the Savior of the world; give me living water, that I may never thirst again.” Strengthen my faith, God!
Thank you, Lord, for your presence in the desert of this life. In each new day, I thirst for many things that are not you and that slake my thirst for a while but leave me parched. Give me the gift today that is you—the peace of your presence in this life as only you can give. And sustain in me today and always the welling up of hope of eternal life with you.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.