Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Joseph pray for us poor thirsty sinners, open our hearts more fully to Jesus love, the living water, which comes to us through the Holy Eucharist, help us to confess our sins, and adore Him so we can receive Him worthily.

Matthew 4; 5-42 Third Sunday in Lent. March 23rd, 2014

“Give me a drink.” This simple statement begins the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman in our Gospel today. This simple statement, “Give me a drink,” reveals a lot about Jesus, and how He draws this woman into a new and profound relationship with God. Conversely, the way in which Jesus deals with this woman can also teach us a lot about how Jesus deals with us. Specifically, it can teach us how He constantly tries to draw us into a deeper friendship, love and deeper union with Him, and with His Father in the Holy Spirit. As we begin the encounter, it is important to note a couple of important details.

St. John tells us it was midday- the start of the heat of the day. “Respectable” people just didn’t go to the well at the midday. For one thing, it was too hot. So you’d always go first thing in the morning or closer to sundown; it was cooler then. You’d only go at midday if you wanted to avoid others; that is, if you had a reason to hide, which is another reason why respectable people only went in the morning.

The fact that the Samaritan woman comes at this time reveals to us a lot about her. It reveals that she definitely has something to hide, has a reason to hide. First, she was a Samaritan, hated by the Jews, living in the midst of Jews; second, she was a woman, and as such considered beneath a slave; and third, she was living in sin and so committing public scandal. With all this being the case, how does Jesus deal with the situation…deal with her?

To begin with, Jesus takes a bold step here even speaking to a Samaritan woman, not to mention one who is trying to hide. A Jewish man would certainly not address a woman in public and certainly would not address a Samaritan woman; not even to mention, a Samaritan woman living in public sin! No wonder why the Samaritan woman is totally surprised by Jesus mere presence; but she was about to be surprised even more.

Jesus then says to her, “Give me a drink.” Unthinkable! If he accepts a drink from her a sinner, a Samaritan, and worse a woman, he will surely become unclean according to Jewish law. Yet, Jesus is poor; He has no bucket. He has no vessel to drink with, but He’s really thirsty- it is noon and he has been walking in the heat of the day; He is tired (Imagine, God is tired!). But is his thirst really just for water, or is it a thirst for something more, much more?

And so, Jesus asks her for water; yet, paradoxically, He will say that He Himself is the source of a new type of water—“Living Water” that will satisfy unlike anything she might have drunk before. Jesus uses this simple request of water to get at something much deeper- a much deeper thirst that He Himself has. He doesn’t so much thirst for water but He thirsts for her love, for Her heart, for her soul, FOR HER;

And so Jesus asks her for water. Yet as he does so, his request reveals something else to this sinful woman. She begins to see her profound poverty, her profound need as she comes into contact with and experiences the Divine Person of Jesus Christ, the very source of the living water, of new life – She realizes that she is the one who is really thirsty and so she ends up asking Jesus for this "living water." And then this woman begins to taste, to drink in the gift of faith that is being offered to her by the One who thirsts not for water, but for her. She begins to experience the waters of His divine grace, life and love.

The encounter continues with another request from Jesus to the woman- “go and call your husband.” This seems to be quite a jump; yet, in the way Jesus was leading her,” it was the perfect next question. Once Jesus had made a personal contact with her, his divine presence and His thirst opened up in her, her desire for the love of God, her thirst for the love of God. However, Jesus saw the big obstacle in her life, which was keeping her from true happiness, keeping her from intimacy with God and His love, keeping her thirst from being quenched—that obstacle was her sin and the consequences of her sin. This woman was living in adultery as a result of being married before five times.

Through grace, Jesus gently brings her to acknowledge truthfully her sin, yet it was not a condemning way, but very gently in order to heal her soul and begin to quench its thirst for holiness, for union with God. No doubt, she knew what sin was and she certainly knew the consequences of sin, for she had been deeply wounded by the failed marriages. And her current situation surely couldn’t be called love, by living together with a man who was not her husband, she was basically being used-for true love only comes from a life-long commitment of love within the sacred bond of marriage which is an exchange of persons who give themselves totally to each other, as a visible sign of God’s desire for a heavenly marital union with us.

And so,as a result of her situation the woman was full of guilt and was so ashamed that she did not want to even show herself in public. She came to the well at midday because she had really lost all self-respect; she had lost hope because she had lost her trust in love. She had been looking for love in all the wrong places; she had given up true love for pleasure; and so, for “feeling good.”

But now she realized Jesus loved her…God loved Her! So she went to confession. We don’t know all of what she confessed to Jesus, but she told the people- “He told me everything I have done.” Jesus told her the truth, and the truth set her free. He read her soul and forgave her of all of her sins. He healed the shame she felt, healed her heart and soul.

With her heart now opened through confession and repentance, He flooded her soul with the waters of his grace-the Spirit of Love, which cleansed her of her guilt; her thirst began to be quenched. The joy of repentance and forgiveness was so strong, that she went and told everyone in her village about Jesus, her new love, and her one true love. With her burden lifted and her hope renewed, they believed her; and so, she evangelized them to the forgiveness and healing of Christ and to His love for which they too were thirsting; they too began to be aware of their great thirst.

Jesus brought to this woman the great gift of faith. He healed her by forgiving her sins and placing His love, which is His Spirit, in her thirsting heart. And then He renews her hope by showing her in what or better yet, in Whom to place her hope in, by showing her the Source of all love, human and divine. In other words, Jesus showed her that seeking human love alone, apart from God, only leads to thirst, deep unquenchable thirst that effects the soul. The reality is Humans thirst for the God who remarkably thirsts for them.

Today we realize that we are so often in the same position as the woman at the well. We are burdened by the struggles, trials of life; this life is so full of struggles and we’re sometimes so tired. Through out our Lenten practices, if we have really been doing them, we can see ever more clearly the degree of our defects and our sins in this life. It can seem that we’re not making any real progress; we may even want to imitate the woman at the well and just hide.

Like the woman, we can be discouraged and so begin to lose hope. So often and in so many ways, we have in our lives placed our hope in the wrong things, instead of in Jesus and His love for us. So often we have sought only human love alone, and failed to seek the love that is above every other love--God’s love. So often, we have failed to seek out, with every fiber of our being, The God who is Love! We must love God first!!!!

To help us and to show us His love for us, today at this Holy Mass Jesus comes to us as well. From the cross he looks down on each of us and cries out to us that He thirsts; He thirst for our souls; He thirst for our love; He thirst for you and for me. And then he points us, as He pointed the woman at the well, to the source of living water and how we can come in contact with it. And how we come in contact with the Living Waters of God’s love is adoration of God. Adoration of God is where faith and hope opens itself to love; adoration is how we love God first in our lives.

We adore God by adoring Jesus who is still on earth in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is Jesus; and so, the Holy Eucharist is God on earth for us to adore. The Holy Eucharist, which is Jesus, is the primary source of this living water, which is the Holy Spirit. Through our faith, hope and love in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus sends us this Living Water, the Holy Spirit deep into our heart and soul. We only lose hope and become discouraged when we don’t look at Jesus in the Holy Eucharist; in other words, when we don’t adore Jesus as God in the Holy Eucharist and place our trust in Him first and foremost above all else-we begin to die of thirst. Jesus I trust in You (the Divine Mercy image is really a picture of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist)

To come in faith before the Holy Eucharist is then to encounter Jesus, as did the woman at the well; to spend time with Jesus at the well spring of the living water of God’s love. We can only experience Christ in the Holy Eucharist if we have faith that He is really and truly there, if we believe that the Holy Eucharist is Christ and so that the Holy Eucharist is God. And if we believe it then our actions in trust and with love must correspond with what we believe.

If we confess all of our sins as did the woman at the well, we then open our hearts to Jesus. By our sin we ourselves block Jesus’ love from coming into our hearts. But confessing our sins removes this self-imposed block and opens our hearts to Jesus Love. And adoring Jesus in the Holy Eucharist then put us touch in the living water of God’s love, the Holy Spirit, so our hearts can be filled more fully with God Himself. Yes we must receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist at Holy Communion every Sunday, even every day if we can, but we must first adore Him in the Holy Eucharist, not only at Holy Mass but whenever we can outside of Holy Mass. Saint Augustine once said, “Let no one eat Christ's flesh, except he first adore it.” (Augustine on Psalm 99:5).

We must drink deeply from the only well that can quench our thirst and that well is the Heart of Christ. Drinking from any other well will leave us dying of thirst. Yes, we must seek human love, human love is good, (we’re not angels), but we cannot seek human love apart from Divine love, the love of God, we cannot in other words put human loves before God. And we must drink always from the well of divine love, which is the Heart of Christ, and the Heart of Christ is the Holy Eucharist.

And so to sum things up; only when we adore God in Spirit and in truth by believing the Eucharist is really Jesus, our lives cleansed by His forgiveness in confession, and entrusting ourselves totally to Him by offering ourselves and all our love to Him at Holy Mass, only then will we begin to experience and quench our thirst for love….both authentic human love and even more importantly, God’s infinite love, God Himself, Our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior through the living waters of the Holy Spirit. When we discover Jesus’ thirst for our love and we try to quench this thirst by offering our love to Him, we discover that he fills our thirst for love of Him, he sends us His Holy Spirit who leads us to a deeper union with God, the Most Blessed Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us Pray, Oh Heart of Jesus, from which Blood and Water gushed forth as the source of the Sacramental life of the Church- as a fount of love and mercy for us and for the whole world, I trust in Thee. Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Joseph pray for us poor thirsty sinners, open our hearts more fully to Jesus love, the living water, which comes to us through the Holy Eucharist, help us to confess our sins, and adore Him so we can receive Him worthily.