Week three of Lent is underway!! How are you holding-up? Remember, we are in this together! This is the great grace of Baptism. We are a part of a
huge family, the family of God. What a comfort when we gather together for Mass and other occasions. When we look around at the sea of people around us, we remember that
we are not alone on this journey. The Samaritan woman in this Sunday’s Gospel, however, felt very much alone. No one wanted anything to do with her because of her sinful past. For the people of her town, she was simply a sinner and nothing more. As far as they were concerned, she was dead to them…as insignificant as the dust beneath their feet. They avoided her like the plague. To touch was to become unclean…to become infected by her sin. To even talk to her would mean social isolation…it was to risk becoming an outcast just like her. Who would be willing to do that for a sinner like her? It was just
easier to ignore her rather than to get mixed-up in her life.
This story makes you wonder what her townspeople must have thought about themselves. If they were more in touch with their own sinfulness and brokenness, would they have been so harsh? Did they feel a twinge of conscience when they walked past her along the roadside or at any of the local establishments? Fear of being an outcast…of being quarantined by society was enough for them to keep her at arm’s length to prevent the spread of her infection. No wonder the Samaritan Woman made her way to the well (a social hotspot like today’s local food store) at noon…since it was the hottest time of day she knew no one would be there…no one that is, except for our Lord. He is often the only one ready and willing to get mixed-up in our lives…ready and eager to meet us at the most difficult, painful, or “hottest” times of our lives.
There He was…waiting for her at the well as she made her way towards Him with her empty pitcher. It wasn’t the empty pitcher that He was most concerned about…it was her empty heart. The Samaritan Woman, like ourselves, aren’t simply sinners to Jesus. We are
loved sinners. Sin means that in some capacity great or small, we have locked Jesus out of some portion of our heart if not all of it. He begs us from His cross (in this case the well) “let Me love you…let me fill your empty heart with My love.” The Samaritan woman was surprised when Jesus asked her for a drink.
No-one expected anything from a
no-body like her. This was what she was made to believe about herself. Her sense of self-worth was nonexistent. She probably thought God couldn’t possibly want anything to do with her…after all no one else wanted anything to do with her. When Jesus asked her for a drink, He was showing her that she had something to offer. She had value. That she was precious in His eyes. It was Him saying very simply, “I see you.”
A “drink of water” may seem so simple. How could that be so important? Well, when you are dying of thirst (as our Lord did on the cross) that small drink is perhaps the most unforgettable one of all, kind of similar to the widow’s mite and the fives loaves of bread and two fish offered to the Lord. The Gospel story ends with the Samaritan Woman leaving her earthly jug of water behind at the well because an even deeper thirst had been satiated: the thirst for love. The thirst for forgiveness. The thirst for belonging. The thirst for family. Sound a lot like Baptism?! Baptism washes away sin and restores us to communion with God. Running back to her village her heart bubbling over with this water of new life she proclaimed that she had found Him…the Christ…the Messiah! Perhaps they needed her now more than ever before…to help them recognize their need for the Lord and what He had to offer them from His well. Let us to go to the well in prayer, in Mass, in confession, in the anointing of the sick, in the Bible, in one another…He is waiting there for you and for me to fill hearts emptied by fear and doubt with His mercy and love.