A good Sunday to all.

One is always a little puzzled when one hears the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. One immediately notices details that are not very plausible, narrative inconsistencies so that at the end one always wonders what has happened. To approach this passage correctly, let us make some observations.

The first one: when reading the Gospel according to John, we must always keep in mind that this evangelist never limits himself to relating the facts in their materiality, he always rereads them in a theological way, he uses biblical images, he makes references to facts and to texts of the Old Testament, so it is not surprising that in the end, it is difficult to know what really happened.

We should never look to the Gospel for the answer to our curiosity, although legitimate; we should only be interested by what the evangelist wants to tell us because it is what we need to know and what is sufficient for our faith.

That’s what we will try to do today with this passage, not to answer our curiosity, but to know which is the message that the evangelist wants to give us. Therefore, if we limit ourselves to consider this passage, as a chronicle page, we will remain quite disappointed because what message can we derive? The moralizing exhortation: Jesus met a woman of lax customs. He knew which one was her moral condition, and brought her back to the right path? This is very little of a message.

Second observation: The characters we meet in the Gospel of John are actual concrete individuals, but the way in which the evangelist presents them to us is a clear invitation to see in them typical figures, symbols of a determined option of life. Facing Christ and his proposal one can adhere to it, or reject it, or be undecided. These personages are the representatives of a spiritual attitude that the evangelist wants us to see and that is reflected in us, that is to say, he wants to tell us to be careful that something of this character is also present in you.

Nathanael, for example, is the character that has his convictions, his certainties, He’s the character that ‘nothing good can come out of Nazareth,’ but he’s a loyal person that allows himself to be challenged by the novelty. There is a Nathanael also present in us. How many times do we have our convictions and then comes the gospel and we give it our adhesion. Martha is the image of the disciple who has some problems believing that Jesus is the Lord of life, and in the end, she rejoices in this light. There is a Martha inside of us because we also struggle to understand, to welcome this light of Christ. Mary of Bethany is the expression of unconditional love of the disciple, she does not give her perfume in drops; the love of the Christian is not given in drops, the container is broken, one gives love even to one’s own enemy. Also, Judas; there is a Judas within us; he is the anti-disciple, he who instead of giving all to his brethren takes what the brethren have and keeps it for himself. There is also a Thomas within us, who finds it hard to believe in the resurrection because he wants answers and rational proofs. And there is also the beloved disciple who is anonymous; he assumes all the attitudes of the authentic disciple and it is an invitation that the evangelist makes to us to become like this disciple. And there is also a Samaritan woman inside of us as we will see.

A third remark: I want to mention the place where the evangelist locates the encounter of Jesuswith the woman of Samaria. In the background you see two mountains, they are the Gerizim and the Ebal. The blessed mountain and the cursed mountain. In fact, a few dozen meters from the top, archaeologists have found the remains of idolatrous cults, so Mount Ebal was a cursed mountain.Let’s take a closer look at these two mountains and climb Gerizim because from there we can contemplate the whole plain and also see the place that interests us the most, the well where Jesusmet the Samaritan woman.

Here we are in the Gerizim, in the foreground, behind me, you can see the remains of a building; they are the cellars of a 6th-century Byzantine basilica with an octagonal shape; they are two octagons, like that basilica that the Byzantines had also built over Peter’s house in Capernaum.This was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. In today’s passage, we will hear the Samaritan woman mention a temple that was in Gerizim. It had been built in the time of Alexander the Great and in the time of Jesus no longer existed because it had been destroyed in 128 by John Hyrcanus, who was the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem and he saw this temple competing with the temple of the holy city, and as soon as he could, he had it destroyed. But this mountain remained sacred.

This temple did not stand where you see the remains of the Byzantine basilica; it stood on another, slightly lower peak. At the top of Mount Gerizim, you can see the site, and this temple was clearly visible from the plain. Between these two mountains, it runs today, as in Jesus’ time, a very important road, which linked Judea with Galilee. Where this road ends beyond the two mountains,you see that there is a city that is very important today and it was also very important in Jesus’ time, it’s Nablus, the Neapolis of Roman times. And now the city of Sychar, which is mentioned in today’s Gospel passage, is indicated. It was located at the crossroads of the most important routes of communication. The name Sychar is an Arameización of the city of Shechem and was located at the very entrance of the gorge between the two mountains, so it controlled the traffic on that road.

Shechem is mentioned a lot in the Bible because the patriarchs, Abraham, and Jacob, passed through there. In the Bible, many episodes are mentioned that occurred in Shechem. I want to mention one, which is related in chapter 24 of the book of Joshua. You remember that Joshua introduced the people of Israel into the Promised Land, conquered this land, and then, before he died, gathered all the people together in Shechem, in this plain, because he wanted the people to make the decision of the God they wanted to worship. “Which God do you want to follow and listen to? Do you want to choose the Lord who delivered them from the land of Egypt? Or do you want to choose the god Baal who is the god of this land, he is the god that sends the hurricanes, the rain, the one that fertilizes the fields, the one who presides over the fertility of the animals? Do you want to follow the Lord or the god of this earth Baal? And all the people answer, ‘We want to follow the Lord.’”

Now I want to point out to you where the well was where Jesus met the Samaritan woman. Notice the distance between Sychar and the well of the Samaritan woman is almost a kilometer. There are two abundant springs of water in Sychar, at Daphne, and at Asghar; then we ask ourselves (and here begin the inconsistencies I mentioned), why does the evangelist sends this woman to the well when she could draw water from these springs? Here you have the well; it is 35 meters deep (I have drunk that water many times).

In Jesus’ time, of course, it was not as you see it today, because the original well’s railing on which Jesus sat was taken to Constantinople by Justinian who placed it in the Hagia Sophia basilica. The present one dates from the 19th century, as several churches had been built over this well, by the Byzantines and then by the Crusaders and they were all destroyed. The church where the well is today is a Greek Orthodox church, but I have also put a picture of what the well looked like in the 19th century.

Let’s listen to how the story begins:

“Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee. He had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.”

Jesus was along the Jordan River valley near Jericho. To go to Galilee he had no need to go through Samaria at all. The road they all traveled was on the east side of the Jordan River, going up northward. Why does the evangelist say he ‘had to pass through’ Samaria? It is not a geographical necessity. Jesus has another objective: he has to find a woman who has abandoned her husband, betrayed him, and has taken five other husbands, but she is not satisfied, she is not content, and Jesus wants to meet this woman. John writes for Christians who know the Old Testament and who know very well who is the husband who has been abandoned by the wife.

The husband is God. This is the sweetest image we find in the Bible. God is the husband in love with his people and these people are an unfaithful wife, has betrayed him. See how the evangelist is introducing us more and more to the allegorical interpretation of this episode. The encounter takes place at the well. Jesus arrives at Sychar where this well was.

The well had an emotional resonance very different in the Jews of Jesus’ time and today. We draw water from the tap; the well doesn’t tell us much, does not arouse emotions or memories, but in a water-poor land, such as Israel, the well was not only the place where water was to be drawn, no. It had many meanings.

The first: it was the place of gathering; by the well were the shepherds who came to water their flocks; to the well came the merchants who displayed their wares and waited for customers to come to the well. Of course, the girls came to the well to chat with their friends. Next to the well were the lovers. There are many accounts in the Bible about these meetings of lovers at the well.

Let us remember, for example, when Abraham sends his servant to look for a wife for his son Isaac; he goes to the well and sees the girls of the city coming to draw water and chooses Rebekah. Jacob meets his beloved Rachel at the well; he waits for the girls to come to draw water and when Rachel arrives, he rolls the stone from the well’s mouth and makes her sheep drink. Also at the well, Moses finds his wife Sephora. The well is the place where the lovers met. Later, the well in the Bible became the symbol of the Torah, of the word of God, the life-giving living water that comes from the Lord. Let us remember the prophet Jeremiah said in the name of God, ‘They have forsaken the wellspring of the Lord and they have dug themselves cracked cisterns that hold no water.’ AlsoIsaiah, ‘All you who are thirsty, come to the water, and enjoy free water even for those who have no money come and draw water.’

Water is a symbol of life, of God’s love, and a symbol of his life-giving word. We will meet the Samaritan woman who must continually go to draw water from a fountain that never fills her, it is not water that finally fills her with life. Jesus will propose to her to draw his water. ‘Jesus sat down by the well’; he is a weary wayfarer. It is significant that this is the only time that the evangelists speak of Jesus’ weariness. He comes from afar, he’s tired from the journey, and he must meet this woman who has abandoned her husband. He must have been really very much in love with this woman.

Let’s look at Jesus’ position: He is sitting at this fountain. Jesus now seems to be substituting for the water in that well because he wants her to draw his water. The time: noon. Here we have another incongruity if we just take the episode as a chronicle, no. We find more and more allegorical references. As a chronicle, the time is strange because no woman was going to the well at that time; it was very hot. They always went for water in the morning and afternoon. The noon hour has another meaning. We find it in the Gospel according to John only once more, when Pilate will present Jesus, ‘Behold the man, behold your king.’

Let us now listen to how Jesus’ encounter with this woman unfolds:

“A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.”

Let’s immediately identify this woman. She has no name, that’s not how you tell a story. She is identified as a Samaritan woman, and we know that Samaria was the region that was bastardized not only ethnically but also religiously. Samaria had forsaken her God. It was Israel that had forsaken the bridegroom.

We recall how the prophet Hosea had had a rather painful conjugal experience; he had been abandoned by his wife Gomer and in order not to suffer he had even thrown her out of the house; he did not want to have anything more with her, but he could not do without that wife. And Hosea had read her love story as that of the God of Israel with his wife. These people who had been unfaithful to the love of the Lord.

Now we see Jesus asking this woman for a drink. In the Semitic culture, to ask for a drink meant to ask for acceptance, and water was the symbol of love. Let us remember the psalmist who had this wonderful relationship with God, that of the lover who says to the Lord, “O God, You aremy God, at the break of day I seek You.” Let us notice how the expressions of the lovers are: “You are my beloved; You alone exist, I know no others”; and the psalmist goes on to say, “My soul thirsts for you, in you does my flesh yearn, as an arid and desert land, without water.” Here we have the need for water; it is that of the lover who asks for the welcome.

“The disciples had gone into the town to buy food.” I would say that it is rather a solution of the evangelist to leave the two lovers alone. The conclusion is that all these elements lead us more and more to read the text symbolically. The meeting of the Lord who came from afar, made a long journey to meet this humanity that had turned away from him. It is God who comes to take back the unfaithful wife.

And now the dialogue comes to light; There is a water that never satiates which is the one that the woman is going to draw from the well and there is water that satiates, that gives a life that does not die, the one that Jesus offers. Let us listen:

The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?’ (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who 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 do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’”

There is material water to which one goes to the well with a bucket. Says the Samaritan woman: ‘You, Jesus, you cannot draw water because you have no bucket.’ Here there is another incongruity: How did the Samaritan woman draw water when she only had the pitcher? This is not a chronicle page but a page of theology and, for this reason, we want to continue to understand the symbolism that the evangelist gives to this episode.

In all cultures water is the symbol of life; to go to draw water means to look for an answer to all the necessities of life. We draw water from many material wells; they give water, but it is water that never fully satiates. We take a good vacation but then we are still thirsty; we have a good party with friends, and we come back happy, but then we get thirsty again. The material water quenches our thirst for a few hours, but then it starts again, reappears and we have to go back again to other wells.

What do these material wells offer you, which for many people is the only end of their life? They give you many beautiful, useful, pleasant things, even necessary for biological life, but keep in mind that they will never fully satisfy you. The person is always looking for new wells, new emotions, and new experiences; he cannot be satisfied with money, with a crumb of pleasurebecause his heart is too big and it is useless to try to fill it with material things.

Profession, relationships, and sexuality give much joy, but they are temporary joy. When the forces falter, when the people we love come to less, if the pursuit of these things were the absolute goal, at the end you conclude that life is meaningless; you have staked your whole life on your profession, and you have achieved success, but be careful, it’s a well that dries up at a given moment; when you retire nobody calls you anymore, and the well has dried up. The short-term hopes of our life sooner or later give way to meaninglessness and even despair.

This is the thirst that the Samaritan woman was experiencing. Jesus had asked her to drink, but now he makes her see that it is she who is thirsty, a thirst of which perhaps she is not even aware. In fact, she is unaware because she thinks she is satisfying this thirst with material water; and Jesus tells her that there is water that you can only receive as a gift; the material thirst you will seek, but the other water, that which really satisfies fully your need of life, you can only receive as a gift.

“If you knew the gift of God.” If it is not understood that Jesus wants to offer us a gift if our catechesis starts from the dispositions, the commandments, the merits, and the whole evangelical message is obscured. There is a gift that is offered and that can also be rejected; and thus, we can lose the decisive opportunity in life, both ours and our loved ones, children, and grandchildren.’And if you knew,’ says Jesus to the Samaritan woman, ‘who it is that says to you, give me to drink, you would have asked him for this water and he would have given it to you; living water springing up for eternal life, not for biological life.’

There is a different term in Greek for ‘life,’ is not ‘βίος’ bios, but ‘ζωή αἰώνιος’ – zoé aiónios’, i.e., eternal life, or rather, it would be better to say ‘the life of the Eternal.’ This is the water that Jesus offers as a gift, his spirit, the divine life that he brought into the world. Biological life, with all the satisfactions that you can give yourself, ends; and because you are well done all these material things, although beautiful, will never fully satisfy you because you have been programmed to collect the gift of water that Jesus offers you.

Now Jesus wants to make this Samaritan woman understand that if she wants to quench her thirst, her desire for life, she must return to recover the husband from whom she has strayed. Let us listen:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come back.’ The woman answered and said to him, ‘I do not have a husband.’ Jesus answered her, ‘You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.’”

What logic there is in Jesus’ invitation to the woman to go and find her husband? And, also, what do the five husbands have to do with the subject of the gift of the living water spoken of? Let’s note well, it’s not five lovers that this woman would have had, but five husbands.

We know that the husband is the person to whom a woman gives her life. The Samaritan woman, therefore, if this were a chronicle, she would have married five times and this is very difficult to justify, even with successive divorces or the death of the husbands; and the law allowed a maximum of three. As information about the life of the woman it makes no sense, but in the theological discourse that John is developing it makes a lot of sense because the husband is God and the Samaritan woman who abandoned the Lord, the husband, and joined herself to other husbands are the people who have turned away from their God.

Samaria was the place of unfaithfulness, and the number 5 has its meaning because the second book of Kings, chapter 17 relates the destruction of Samaria conquered by the Assyrians, who deported the Samaritan people and they imported five peoples who came in with their gods the Samaritans also began to worship these gods and have the Lord they also had before. Here is the unfaithfulness represented by this Samaritan woman.

Notice how Jesus speaks to this woman; he does not use the threatening language of the prophets who rebuked the people for their unfaithfulness, no. Jesus speaks softly to the woman inviting her to take back her husband. Jesus is speaking to us today, we are this unfaithful woman and he wants us to understand the reason of all our dissatisfactions. He tells us: ‘You will not be happy until you unite your life to the only husband, which is the Lord.’

Everybody has a God; there is no such thing as atheism, there is always somebody or something to whom people give their lives convinced that they will be happy. This spouse, this god, may be the bank account. Let us ask ourselves then: Today, in the time of Lent, time of rethinking the options, who is our God, is he the spouse or have we joined our life to some idol? Now Jesus, answering a question from the Samaritan woman, introduces the subject of the new unique worship that the Father expects from all humankind. Let us listen:

“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, it has already come, when those who give true worship shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth and indeed the Father seeks such people 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 the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking with you.’”

The woman gives Jesus the choice between two temples: The one at Gerizim which was no longer there, but the worship of God at Gerizim continued, and the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus immediately clarifies: The worship of God on the Gerizim is idolatrous, that of Jerusalem is legitimate and it is according to the Torah, but “believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will the Father be worshipped.” Here God changes his name; he is no longer the God of the law, of the Torah, who imposed separation and discrimination between the pure impure, good and bad, children of Abraham and pagans, no; the time is coming when God will be worshipped in a new temple. and this God is the Father, and the Father makes no distinction or discrimination between his children.

This worship shall be in spirit and in truth. What does it mean? Spirit does not indicate something subtle, impalpable, no. Spirit is in opposition to the flesh. Flesh indicates the impulses that come from the biological nature that drives us to think of ourselves and to be disinterested in others. The spirit is that water that Jesus brought as a gift to humankind, it is his spirit, that is, the divine life of the Father in Heaven which is given to every person and this spirit leads to true worship, i.e. the involvement in the life of love for every person, which is that of the heavenly Father. This worship, this involvement in love is the only worship that the heavenly Father expects from us.

This is the true worship that makes us true people for if one does not embrace this spirit, one is not yet a true person, in spirit and truth. From now on the woman speaks no more. The last words are those of Jesus. She now leaves Jesus and goes to the village because she has found the bridegroom and she must bring out of their unhappy condition those who continue to have husbands other than the Lord. She has understood where to draw the water that quenches thirst. In fact, she abandons the pitcher. Let’s listen to what she does:

“At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, ‘What are you looking for? or ‘Why are you talking with her?’ The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?’ They went out of the town and came to him.”

The apostles return to the scene; they had been dismissed somewhat awkwardly by the evangelist. He had said they had gone to get food. It is unlikely that they all went for food; it was enough to send Judas, perhaps with another disciple to control him because the evangelist John himself will say that he was not very correct in the management of the goods. No, this is not a chronicle. It’s that the evangelist John wanted to leave the bridegroom, God, alone with the unfaithful wife.

And now the disciples return and they don’t ask Jesus what he was talking about… and they did wrong, they should have done it, they should have asked him so that they would have heard, like us, the dialogue he had with the unfaithful wife and, therefore, the announcement of a new cult, of a new worship of the heavenly Father who makes no distinction between his sons and daughters.

The woman abandons her pitcher; she no longer needs it, she no longer draws that water from which she expected to receive all the joy of life. Now she has discovered the new water, the gift of God, and, in fact, that pitcher remains there empty, abandoned, as empty as they were before the pitchers of Cana that represented the religion of purification, the old relationship with God. The woman has discovered a new relationship with God, which is not that of the master, of the lawgiver, but that of the spouse by whom all humankind must feel unconditionally loved.

And now, what does this woman do? She has made the discovery of where joy comes from, and the meaning of life; and she becomes an apostle, she cannot keep this joy to herself; she is going to announce to everyone she meets this new relationship of love with the Lord. We could ask ourselves a question: If we do not become apostles there is a danger that perhaps we have not understood the gift of God either.

Now we ask ourselves, but will this woman achieve results in her proclamation, in her apostolate? The evangelist now presents us with the optimism with which Jesus invites his disciples to look at their apostolic mission of the proclamation of the Gospel that these disciples will be called to spread. Let us listen:

“Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat of which you do not know.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Could someone have brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving his payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.’”

The Samaritan woman told the people of Sychar about her life-changing encounter and convinced them to leave the city to have the same experience as she had. This is the apostolate that works; she did not go to repeat a catechism lesson out of a book; it is fine, but it is only credible, convincing, if the person who presents it has a heart full of joy because he has met Christ, he has heard his word, he has accepted it and can testify that the Gospel makes happy.

Today in our communities there is so much pessimism, we see so many sad faces, ‘We are less and less, we are getting older and older, we are more and more tired’; then the worldliness; ‘nobody listens to us anymore.’ What are these complaints, these downcast eyes? Jesus disagrees and tells us, ‘look up, look at the fields, they are ready for harvest,’ and quotes a proverb: ‘In four months the harvest will be here.’

Our time is not a time for discouragement, it is the propitious moment for the announcement. Humanity is disappointed with ideologies, political parties, with deceitful promises that circulate through the media; it waits for the Gospel, thirsting for this living water; Jesus says that it is the time of harvest, let us not waste this favorable moment. And now appear the Samaritans who come to Jesus. Let’s listen:

“Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me everything I have done.’ When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in himbecause of his word, and they said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.’”

The conclusion of the story brings to the scene the woman who did not keep for herself the gift of the living water that Jesus offered her, and the Samaritans who heard her proclamation believed in great numbers. Let us take note of the exemplary way of faith of these Samaritans. First of all, they did not need to witness miracles; the announcement made by the woman was enough for them, and they were convinced by the beauty of this message.

The Gospel has in itself a divine, prodigious power, and because we are well-made, we are programmed for the Gospel, when it is proclaimed to us in its purity, we feel in the depths of our hearts the invitation to adhere to it immediately. This is what the Samaritans did. But after this listening, a personal encounter with Jesus was also necessary and, in fact, the woman led them to him. This journey of faith made by the Samaritans is what the Gospel passage invites us to do during this time of Lent.

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.