Living Water: Ex 17, Rom 5, and the Samaritan Woman in Jn 4

**Text from the Third Sunday of Lent (Year A)**

**Scripture Readings:**

* **First Reading:** Exodus 17:3-7 – Israel murmurs in the desert for lack of water, and Moses strikes the rock to bring forth water.

* **Second Reading:** Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 – Justification by faith brings peace with God through Christ, whose love is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

* **Gospel:** John 4:5-42 – Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, revealing that his living water satisfies the deepest thirst.

**Reflection:**

The third Sunday of Lent (Year A) presents three texts that intertwine themes of water and thirst. From Exodus 17, we hear Israel’s murmuring in the desert for lack of water, leading to Moses striking the rock to bring forth a spring. Romans 5 underscores the unmerited nature of God’s grace: justification is a gift received through faith, not earned by human effort. The Gospel from John 4 depicts Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, where he offers “living water” that satisfies the thirst not only for physical hydration but for spiritual fulfillment.

These readings guide us along a path: from thirst to source, from need to gift, from murmuring to faith. They teach us that in the desert of our lives, God’s grace abounds even when we feel abandoned, and that Jesus offers living water that quenches the deepest longings of our hearts.

Jesus, weary from travel, sits by Jacob’s well in Sicar. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water. Jesus asks her to drink. She is surprised: “How can you, being a Jew, ask me to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9). Jesus responds that if she knew who was asking, she would ask him for “living water” (v.10). The woman inquires about the deep well and her pitcher. Jesus clarifies: “Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Ever.” (vv.13-14). She asks for that water. Jesus reveals he knows her life: five husbands and the current one is not her husband. The woman recognizes him as a prophet, and then they discuss worship. Jesus proclaims the hour when true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth (v.23). The woman confesses she knows the Messiah is coming. Jesus says: “I am he who speaks to you” (v.26). She leaves her pitcher, goes into town, and calls others. The Samaritans came, heard Jesus, and confessed: “This is indeed the Savior of the world” (v.42). The encounter at the well is a progressive initiation into faith: from strangeness to recognition, from physical water to living water, from the woman to her people.

IV. Mary and the Fountain of Living Water

Exodus 17 shows Israel murmuring in the desert for lack of water. Mary traversed her own deserts: the flight to Egypt, the loss of her teenage son in the Temple, three years of itinerant ministry by Jesus, the Passion and Cross, without a recorded murmur in the Gospels. Mary’s silence is not passive resignation; it is trust that the rock will provide water, that the Lord is with his people even when unseen. The Samaritan woman left her pitcher at the well when she met Jesus: she set down her usual thirst-quencher because she had found something greater. Mary, in her “fiat” of Announcement, also left her pitcher behind: expectations of a normal life, the human project of a simple family, to receive within her womb the very Word, the Fountain of Living Water. Romans 5 says that God’s love was poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Mary is the place where this pouring happened uniquely: the Spirit covered her with his shadow (Luke 1:35) and from her sprang the fountain to quench the world’s thirst. Lent invites the disciple to go to the well like the Samaritan woman: with the thirst of one still using an old pitcher, to find there what forever satisfies.