Living Water

For the next three weeks of our annual Lenten journey toward Easter, we will be invited to consider three of the most fundamental elements of our faith, WATER, LIGHT and LIFE.  Our mentor and guide will be St. John, the fourth evangelist.  Our companions along the way will be the unnamed woman of Samaria, the man born blind, and Lazarus.  Each of these epitomizes a certain aspect of human need; each also exhibits a fundamental disposition toward God which every believer is called to emulate.  By sharing in their experiences and by joining in their encounters with Jesus, each of us will be able to identify within ourselves those same basic human needs and to find the remedy for our every need in God.                  Thirst led the woman of Samaria to the well in the noonday sun.  God was in her thirst, drawing her to the living WATER who is Jesus.  With that woman we also thirst for truth, understanding, mercy, a change of heart and a new beginning.  Standing near her, we will hear Jesus initiate the conversation, “If only you recognized God’s gift . . . you would have asked . . . he would have given.”                           On this, the Third Sunday of Lent, we do recognize, we do ask and we are given living water.  With the woman, we experience the WATER of salvation and the satisfaction of all of our thirsts in God.  
        Having accepted Jesus and the water of life he had come to offer, the woman then became his witness to her friends and neighbors.  On the strength of her testimony, they too were drawn to Jesus and like the woman, they too came to believe.  Thus, in this woman at the well, John offers us an exemplary disciple.  
        Like her, we are called to drink deep and be washed in Jesus’ water of life at baptism.  With her, we are invited to ask of Jesus all those important questions that will lead us to faith.  Like her, we are challenged to move beyond doubt, to leave our former ways behind and embrace the life he shares with us, here and now and forever!