Scripture Reflection - March 8, 2026

Third Sunday of Lent

First Reading: Exodus 17: 3-7 

Second Reading: Romans 5: 1-2, 5-8

Gospel: John 4: 1-42

It was a blistering hot day that found Jesus sitting by the ancient well of Jacob in the village of Sychar.  The brutal heat made his thirst great but he did not have a bucket to drop into the well. He also had a far more important intent as he patiently waited for a woman who would come to draw water. When she appeared, Jesus simply asked her for a drink. She was a Samaritan, a member of a group totally unaccepted by the Jews because of significantly disparate beliefs and practices. The request of Jesus was his declaration to her and to all ages that God's kingdom transcends all the ethnic and racial barriers that we human beings erect, the prejudices that destroy the brother/sisterhood of that which makes us truly human. Jesus shatters the cruel prejudices that exposed the differences between gender, race, color and whatever else separated the accepted from the rejected.  This story was more than a casual encounter; it was an epiphany infused with relationship building that would be inclusive and central to the manifestation of Christ’s mission to draw all to himself. "Everyone who drinks this water (from the well) will continue to thirst but if you drink from the water that I will give you, you will never be thirsty again." It appears to be a magical answer to the woman's daily backbreaking trek to the well with her water jar upon her shoulders, but Jesus does not have as his purpose, elimination or transformation of difficulties. He works to transform hearts, to regenerate lives in order that he might give more than we could ever dream on our own. Jesus draws forth the presence of the Spirit welling up within this Samaritan outcast who slowly comes to realize that this water is a metaphorical and prophetic message of eternal life.  Jesus knows the truth about the woman, the truth of her heart and the reality of what is missing in her life.  If you and I believe that Jesus is the living water offering us deep, penetrating and living joy, then it cannot be compromised by the secular, valueless world that surrounds us. This woman reveals through her conversation that she was well versed in the Scriptures; she knew her facts and despite a misguided life and her temporary lack of understanding, she was open to the revelation of Jesus and his Word. Surely the words of the psalmist were familiar to her: "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, the living God.”

This nameless woman was recognized by her contemporaries to be a moral pariah, a sinner, and so she comes to this particular well, farther than her village well, at a time hotter than the usual cool of the morning or evening. The heat of the blazing sun was more merciful than they who cast aspersions on her worth. The deeply driven heart of the encounter is that Jesus accepted this rejected human soul, this object of derision, where she was. He knew that she had a greater capacity for truth than was recognized by others even by herself.  Jesus is always looking for that element of brokenness within us from which our deepest yearnings emerge. "If you only knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water." Had Jesus not focused on her brokenness she would have returned home with a filled water jug that could never assuage her thirst.  She recognized the gentle compassion manifested in the closeness of this Christ and her thirst was quenched and transformed.  

This beautiful story enables us to explore the sacredness of our own spirit and the equal value of the ‘other.’ We so often dismiss those who appear to be less graced, less fortunate in the world’s eyes but they are often the hidden instruments of God's plan.  In reality we need to accept our limitations, our failings and our faults for what they are and recognize the impact they have had in the shaping of our lives. We only catch glimpses of ourselves until we are ready to face with honesty our own emptiness and our own vulnerability.  It is only when the woman abandons the water jar to run and share the news that Jesus is the long awaited one does she become the living vessel of living water. She discovered that the one who asks is really the one who gives. This woman's message, "Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did" is a call to have us come to Jesus and find the one who alone can wipe away our sins, who knows all about them yet never judges. He simply forgives, forgets and renews.

 In our world, a spiritual and physical thirst exists among three fourths of the planet's inhabitants. We call their ‘home’ the third world, a term that speaks of horrific, unbelievable realities where we find, over and over again, the face of the ‘Lazarus’ focus. This reality highlights that one of our most profound calls is to listen to the voices of unexpected prophets and to cross boundaries into those spaces that are considered, because of our biases and prejudices, to be unlikely sources of God's grace. This woman was an outcast and yet Jesus chose her to advance the message of his Messiahship. Unfortunately, we forget that there is a place where our inner thirst, our sense of restlessness, our ever increasing desire for more can only be satisfied in Jesus. This lack of spiritual depth can so easily manifest itself even in our present relationships when we ignore others, when we are less present to their concerns or indifferent to their needs.  How many beautiful relationships have never begun because we neglected to see the Christ in the persons who surround us, the persons who could color our days with their presence and their goodness?  In rejecting them we do indeed run the risk of missing a ‘many splendored thing’. We must be careful not to lose the mystery of the divine in the ordinary mundane realities of our daily lives; we must never forget that each one of us is sacred because we are created in God's Image and we share the images that the Incarnate Christ shares with us, persons created to be instruments of his grace.

The paradox is that we can only become attuned to this reality as we let go of what we think we have to give, what we think we possess and might if persuaded, decide to share. If we deny others our life giving water of compassion or use our power to annihilate the fragile, we proclaim that good things are reserved for the fortunate and denied to the vulnerable. In the end, the woman left her water jar at the feet of Jesus because she realized that it is he alone who could quench her insatiable thirst of spirit.  Is this not what we all need to do?  Opening your ‘I am’ to the ‘Great I Am’ makes the conversation, the encounter sacramental, and opening oneself to God is discovering God in the depth of your own well.

Each of us needs to lay down our water jar at the feet of Jesus and lift up our cup of need to him!

Sr. Anne Daniel Young, OP