Daily Gospel Reflection
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March 15, 2020
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that 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 have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing 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. I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these 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 Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
“Give me a drink.”
This request is unusual to me. Why would Jesus begin a conversation in which he intends to quench another’s thirst by talking about his own?
Though he got the woman’s attention with his request, perhaps that was not his primary intent. Perhaps their thirsts are intertwined.
Perhaps Christ’s request is the same thing as his offer.
“The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Jesus is the living water that he offers. He invites this woman to drink of his own stores, to drink of his very life. This is how he pours himself out for each person who comes to the well: on the cross, pouring out his life to depletion, crying out, “I thirst,” giving his life on the chance that we may drink. For his thirst is not to drink: his thirst is for us to drink. He thirsts for our drawing near.
A beloved Theology professor, Dr. Pagliarini, once told me that when someone sacrifices their life for another, like pushing a child out of the way of a moving truck, it is tragic because the moment of that person’s fullest outpouring is the moment of their death. Not so with the cross. Jesus lives, and his resurrection extends his outpouring of love eternally. His stores are never depleted; he becomes an eternal outpouring, a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Jesus Christ yesterday, today, and forever pours out his living water to be drunk freely. We are filled, and he is somehow both emptied and filled.
Luigi Giussani says, “The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ.” He begs, he thirsts. Do you?
Prayer
Jesus, you know all our secrets and every bit of our past. And you love each one of us.
In our errors and in our yearnings, we grasp for things that will never fill us up or satisfy. Give us living water so that we will be thirsty no more. Only your living water, your word, will quench that deepest thirst within every human being.
Jesus, you are the messiah, the anointed one, and you tell us everything we need to know. In our prayer we strive to worship God in Spirit and truth. You are truly the savior of the world. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Louise de Marillac was a French saint who struggled to find God's will for her life: she married, had a child, discerned the religious life, and struggled to find God's will in the ups and downs of life's fortunes.
In 1591, Louise was born out of wedlock to a very wealthy man, Louis de Marillac. Louise never knew her birth mother, but her father Louis embraced her as his natural daughter, although not his legal heir, until he remarried a new wife, Antoinette Le Camus, who refused to accept Louise into their household. Thus, Louise was cared for by various affluent relatives at the Dominican monastery of Poissy.
When Louise was twelve, her father passed away. She began to feel a draw towards religious life. She applied to be a Capuchin nun, and her application was denied. Louise was devastated by this rejection. When she was twenty-two, Louise was persuaded by her family to marry a wealthy young man named Antoine, who was the secretary to the queen. In 1613, Antoine and Louise were wed. Later that year, Louise bore a son, Michel.
While living in Paris, Antoine was struck ill, and Louise cared for her ailing husband and was consumed with regret and guilt for not entering the religious life. Thankfully, her spiritual advisor, St. Francis de Sales, comforted her and advised her to seek God's will in her current situation: in her life with her husband and son.
Louise was consoled in prayer on the Feast of Pentecost, 1623, that she should remain with Antoine, and, if he died before her, she would seek to make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Antoine passed away three years later. Louise created her rule of life, and went about her daily duties of caring for her son, maintaining her household and caring for the poor in the spirit of a religious sister. Soon, Louise was forced to move out of her fine home and seek more modest housing. She moved in close to where St. Vincent de Paul was doing his charitable work with the poor of Paris.
With a great deal of effort, Louise and Vincent founded the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who worked in Paris alongside St. Vincent to nurse and care for the sick. More important than any of the good work the sisters did, Louise believed that it was above all, vitally important that every woman, whether married or religious, work to surrender herself entirely to God. This surrender to God is the basis of virtue in our homes, our religious communities, and is the true gift of Christian charity.
Louise died at the age of 68 in 1660. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934. She is the patron saint of widows, social workers, the sick and disappointed, children who let down their parents, and people rejected by religious orders. St. Louise reminds us all that God's will can be pursued in any state of life and it is never too late to answer God's call.
St. Louise de Marillac, who founded the Daughters of Charity with St. Vincent de Paul—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Louise de Marillac is in the public domain. Last accessed February 3, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
