0
0
Illustration: ; The Water of Life Discourse between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well – by Angelika Kauffmann, 17th–18th century
Pope Francis’ catechesis prepared for the general audience of 26 March 2025
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Cycle of Catechesis – Jubilee 2025. Jesus Christ our Hope. II. The life of Jesus.
The encounters 2. The Samaritan Woman. “Give me a drink!” (Jn 4:7)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today, after reflecting on the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, who went in search of Jesus, we will reflect on those moments when it seems that Jesus is waiting right there, at the crossroads in our life.
They are encounters that surprise us, and at first we may even be a little shy; we try to be prudent and to understand what is happening.
This was probably also the experience of the Samaritan woman mentioned in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel (in footnote below).
She did not expect to find a man at the well at noon; in fact, she hoped to find no one at all.
In fact, she goes to draw water from the well at an unusual hour, when it is very hot.
Perhaps this woman is ashamed of her life, perhaps she has felt judged, condemned, not understood, and for this reason she has isolated herself, she has broken off relations with everyone.
To go from Judea to Galilee, Jesus would have had to take a different road and not go through Samaria.
It would also have been safer, given the tense relations between the Jews and the Samaritans.
Instead, He wants to go through there, and he stops at that very well, right at that time!
Jesus waits for us and lets himself be found precisely when we think that there is no hope left for us. The well, in the ancient Middle East, the well was a place of encounter, a place where marriages were sometimes arranged. It was a place of betrothal.
Jesus wants to help this woman understand where she can find the true answer to her desire to be loved.
The theme of desire is fundamental to understanding this encounter.
Jesus is the first to express His desire: “Give me a drink!” (v. 10).
For the sake of opening a dialogue, Jesus makes himself appear weak, in order to reassure the other person so that she will not be afraid.
Thirst is often, even in the Bible, the image of desire.
But Jesus is thirsting primarily for the woman’s salvation.
“He who was asked for something to drink”, says Saint Augustine, “thirsted for the faith of the woman herself”. [Homily 15.11]
Whereas Nicodemus had come to Jesus at night, here Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at noon, the time when there is the most light.
It is indeed a moment of revelation.
Jesus reveals himself to her as the Messiah and also sheds light on his life.
He helps her to reread her history, which is complicated and painful: she has had five husbands and is now with a sixth who is not a husband.
The number six is not a co-incidence – but usually indicates imperfection.
Perhaps it is an allusion to the seventh bridegroom, the one who will finally satisfy this woman’s desire to be truly loved.
And that bridegroom can only be Jesus.
When she realizes that Jesus knows her life, the woman shifts the conversion to the religious issue that divided Jews and Samaritans.
This sometimes happens to us too when we pray: at the moment when God touches our life, with its problems, we sometimes lose ourselves in reflections that give us the illusion of a successful prayer.
In reality, we have erected barriers of protection.
But the Lord is always greater, and to this Samaritan woman, to whom, according to cultural precepts, he should not even have spoken, he gives the supreme revelation: He speaks to her of the Father, who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And when, once again surprised, she remarks that in these matters it is better to wait for the Messiah, He tells her: “It is I who speak to you” (v. 26). It is like a declaration of love: the One you are waiting for is Me, the One who can finally respond to your desire to be loved.
At this point the woman runs to call the people of the village, because mission because mission is born precisely from the experience of feeling loved.
And what proclamation could she have brought, if not her experience of being understood, welcomed, forgiven? It is an image that should make us reflect on our search for new ways of evangelization.
Like a person in love, the Samaritan forgets her jar of water and leaves it at the feet of Jesus. The weight of the jar on her head reminded her of her condition, of her troubled life, every time she returned home. But now the jar is left at Jesus’ feet. The past is no longer a burden; it is reconciled. And so it is for us: in order to go and proclaim the Gospel, we must first lay down the burden of our history at the feet of the Lord, to give Him the weight of our past. Only reconciled people can bring the Gospel.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us not lose hope!
Even if our history seems to us burdensome, complicated, perhaps even ruined, we always have the possibility to entrust it to God and to begin our journey anew.
God is merciful and always awaits us!
_______________________
Footnote on the Samaritan Woman (John chapter 4).
When the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
He had to pass through Samaria Jesus came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well.
It was about the sixth hour (noon). There came a woman of Samaria to draw water.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain;[a] and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 2 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city and said to the people, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the city and were coming to him.
, , ,39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony,
“He told me all that I ever did.” 40
So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42
They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days he departed to Galilee.
