The Thirst for Christ. III Sunday of Lent (A)

Water and thirst dominate the liturgy of this Third Sunday of Lent. In the first reading, the people of Israel, wandering in the desert, murmur against Moses and, on a deeper level, against God himself: “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”. In spite of having witnessed the great works of God, they put him to the test. The place is called Massah and Meribah, because there the people discussed and asked, “....“Is the Lord among us or not?".

How different is what happens in Sychar, compared to the Gospel! In the desert, thirst leads to doubt and rebellion; at the well of Samaria, thirst becomes the way to faith. At the end of the Gospel, the people declare: “We no longer believe because of what you say; we have heard it ourselves and we know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.”. The Gospel passage is one of the longest and richest dialogues in all of Scripture. The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman develops little by little, taking several decisive turns. It begins with a simple and surprising request: “Give me to drink”. Jesus' thirst sets the tone for the whole encounter. The woman is surprised: “How can you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, to drink?”. But Jesus immediately broadens his horizon: “....“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says ‘give me a drink’, you would ask him and he would give you living water.".

Jesus asks for water, but it is He who actually offers the water, the living water. As the dialogue deepens, the woman asks: “...".“Lord, give me this water: then I will no longer be thirsty, nor will I have to come here to draw it.”. What begins as a request from Jesus becomes her desire. Christ's offer awakens a deeper demand in her heart. As the conversation continues, Jesus reveals the truth of her life, she has had five husbands and now lives with someone who is not her husband. Behind this revelation is not condemnation, but compassion. We see a woman marked by a deep longing, by an unfulfilled search for love and happiness. She has searched again and again and yet she has not given up her desire for something more.

Christ's thirst, then, is ultimately a thirst to quench our thirst. Or, put more accurately, Christ's desire is to fulfill our deepest desires. The Samaritan woman reflects our own hearts. Like her, we long for happiness, for love, for meaning in life; and like her, we often look for these things in the wrong places, even when experience tells us they will not satisfy us. We keep returning to the same wells, drawing water that leaves us thirsty again. Only Christ can give the living water that truly satiates, the water that does not compel us to return endlessly to the well. When our desires - even earthly and temporal ones - are united to Christ, his grace purifies and elevates them, directing our gaze towards the eternal. Thus the words of Jesus are fulfilled: “He who drinks of this water thirsts again; but he who drinks of the water that I shall give him shall thirst no more: the water that I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”. United with Christ, we ourselves become springs of living water.

However, in order for Christ to satisfy our desires, something is required of us. We must first acknowledge our inadequacies. We must admit where we have sought lasting happiness in what is fleeting and ephemeral. Jesus leads the Samaritan woman to recognize that her many relationships could not fulfill her. This honest acknowledgment, this humble confession, bridges the gap between Christ's thirst for us and his gift of living water for us.

We often like to identify ourselves with another Samaritan, the better known Good Samaritan. But today it is with this Samaritan woman that we should identify more closely. In her we see ourselves reflected: men and women with deep desires that only God can fully satisfy. The season of Lent invites us to go beyond the cheap things with which we try to quench our thirst, and to turn to Christ himself, the only one who satisfies and who offers us eternal life.