Deacon Paul Brancheau - March 8

St. Philip Catholic Church: In our part of the world, if our water was shut down, there are no wells to quench our thirst. In some parts of the world, wells still exist. The village well or pump was a great meeting place. You would expect to meet other people from the village there and even strangers who needed refreshing water on their journey. Many a conversation would have been heard or talked about at the village well. The setting for today's gospel reading was the local well of a Samaritan town. Journeying from Judea to the south of Galilee in the north, Jesus and his disciples stop there. We have an image of Jesus as a tired and thirsty traveler. He is a stranger in these parts, and at the well, he meets a woman who is on home ground. He starts a conversation by asking her for a drink. because she has a bucket that could draw water from the well. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus identifies himself with the thirsty who long for water. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. On this occasion, the woman seems reluctant to satisfy Jesus' thirst. He was a Jew and she was a Samaritan, and at that time there was great hostility between Jews and Samaritans. not unlike the hostility between Jews and Palestinians today. There was a barrier between the woman and Jesus and the woman was very aware of it. Jesus seems indifferent to this barrier. God was always at work through Jesus trying to overcome ancient hostilities. Having received a rather frosty reply to his request for a drink, Jesus went on to say that through him, God was offering her something much more wonderful than the water from the well. God was offering her living water, a gift that could permanently satisfy thirst, a gift which, if received, would become a spring deep inside her, welling up to eternal life. What is this gift from God that Jesus was offering her? Jesus was offering her the living water of the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus, God wanted to pour the spirit of his love into this woman's heart. The spirit of God's love would satisfy the deepest thirst in her life, the thirst for a love that was faithful. On her own admission, she had failed to find such love in her human relationships. As Jesus continued to engage her in conversation, She became more aware of this deeper thirst in her life for God. Jesus brought her deep spiritual thirst to the surface. She started to speak about the things of God. How should be worshiped? She went on to speak of her longing for a Messiah who would tell us everything. That was the opening that Jesus needed to make that wonderful revelation to her. I am I who am speaking to you, I am he." She suddenly lost all interest in fetching water from the well. Leaving her bucket there, she went and shared her emerging faith in Jesus with the townspeople. She brought them to the well to meet Jesus, and they in turn brought Jesus to their homes in the town. And soon they came to confess him as Savior of the world. The woman became a powerful witness to Jesus. He brought her on a journey from their initial dismissal of him to being an influential laborer in God's harvest. The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman is also our story. The way Jesus related to her is how he relates to each one of us. Jesus met her while she was going about her daily chores. The Lord meets us too. at the heart of our daily lives. He comes to us as we are, carrying, as we all do, the impacts of our past struggles and our disappointments. He tries to tap into the deeper thirst in our lives, our thirst for a love that is reliable, a thirst for peace of mind and heart, a thirst for a way of life that corresponds to our identity. as beloved sons and daughters of God. He continues to stand before us, offering us the same gift from God that he offered the woman, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's love. As St. Paul says in today's second reading, the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that he has given to us. We already received that gift of the living water of the Spirit at our baptism. Sometimes we can forget what we have been given, this great gift that can satisfy the deepest thirst in our hearts. We can be tempted to go to other inferior wells whose waters cannot truly satisfy. Yet, even if this happens, the Lord continues to meet us where we are. He always stands ready to pour afresh the living water of the Spirit of God's love into our hearts. If we welcome and receive this gift, the Spirit will empower us to create openings for others to receive the same gift, just as the Samaritan woman did.