Gospel of John, chapter 4:41-42

A quaint and ancient well lay at the center of a small village, called Shechem, in the region of Samaria. The people who lived in this area were known as Samaritans–a break-away group who had given up the practice of the true faith a long time ago. Thus, Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along.

Jesus was passing through this region one day and, coming upon the well, He sat down for He was tired from His journey. A Samaritan woman came along, balancing an empty water jug on her head under the hot desert sun. She spotted Jesus, a Jewish stranger to these parts, sitting at the well where women usually gathered. He asked the woman the favor of a drink, but received instead a rebuff. Samaritans did not fraternize with Jews.

Only the infinite patience of Jesus helped this woman to recognize God’s gift. Not the gift of water, that precious gift that quenched the thirst of desert dwellers, but the gift of living water: Jesus himself.

Upon learning that she had found the source of spiritual life (living water), the woman ran off to her friends to tell them the good news. What water was to the thirsting body, Jesus was to her spirit. She left the water jug there at the well, and she left her former life. She did not feel isolated any more. Her bitter indifference was turned into joy and openness, for Jesus had satisfied her thirst for the source of life.

At this season of advent we look toward our own renewal in spirit as we are called to set aside whatever deflects us from the spiritual source of our life. We are called to join with the Samaritan woman and her neighbors in accepting Christ, the living water, into our lives.

We can pray with the psalmist: “As the deer longs for running water, so my soul longs for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1).

Fr. Hugh Duffy