The thirst of the heart

Third Sunday of Lent - Year A - March 8, 2026

Roman Rite

Ex 17.3 to 7; Ps 95; Rm 5, 1-2.5-8; Jn 4, 5-42

 

Ambrosian Rite

Ex 34.1 to 10; Ps 105; Gal 3.6 to 14; Jn 8.31 to 59

Sunday of Abraham

 

Introduction

On this Third Sunday of Lent, as later in the Fourth and Fifth Sunday, the Liturgy, instead of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, offers us three texts taken from the Gospel of St. John. They describe three meetings of Jesus:

• the one at Jacob's well with the Samaritan woman, who receives the gift of the water that quenches thirst forever;

•the one with the man born blind, who receives the light of the eyes and of the heart;

•the one with his friend Lazarus, whom He resurrects.

The encounter with each of these three people highlights some aspects of the person of Jesus, Son of God, who gives life by quenching our thirst with "spiritual" water, by giving light to see God and not just the world, and by giving life to a friend, namely to each of us

 

1) Our thirst.

 Because He is love, God thirsts to love and be loved; man, his creature, thirsts to be loved and to love. This thirst leads Christ to ask to the Samaritan woman: "Give me a drink" (see Jn 4, 7). The Son of God comes to us as a beggar in need of what we can give. "The greatest thing in the love of God is not the fact that he loves us, but the fact that he asks for love, as if he could not be able to do without what we can give to him. The one who is infinite, who is the eternal, the one who is self-sufficient rests on the brink of a well” (Father Divo Barsotti). The Samaritan woman represents the whole humanity, whose thirst for love cannot be satisfied by any man (the Samaritan woman had had six men).

Let us try to imagine the scene of today's Gospel: around noon a woman goes to Jacob's well, which is located near to the village where she lives, to draw water and within minutes lands to the faith that her encounter with Christ arouses. Jesus is waiting for her at the well and he too expressed his wish. Faith is born from the meeting between two deep desires that "talk" to each other. The thirst of Christ reveals the secret of the thirst for this woman, who represents all of us.

Why does this woman come to faith and does it so quickly?

• Because she agrees to a dialogue with Christ, who is waiting at the rim of the well. Because she comes to the well where she goes every day, and because every day her body is thirsty. The Samaritan woman is thirsty also and above all for love, and does not find it either exaggerating the love she already has, nor continually changing love (ahead of the five men she has already left and the one with whom she lives, now comes Christ, the one who is the “seventh").

• Because she gets thirsty not only for the water that quenches the body, but also for the one that quenches the thirst for truth, love, and justice. This “spiritual” thirst - in front of Jesus who says "If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him and he would have given you living water" (Jn 4, 10) - pushes this woman to beg, saying: "Lord, give me this water" (Jn 4, 14).

This woman not only is the humanity alive at the time of the earthly life of Christ. She also represents the whole of humanity of all time, whose thirst is well expressed by these words: "O God, you are my God, for you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts, in a land parched, lifeless, and without water"(Ps 63.2).

The thirst of man was not extinguished either then or ever: it is not extinguishable. In every human being there is the unavoidable question of meaning (understood as direction and taste of life) and opening to the Infinite. To this question of the infinite, the world responds with endless things that never fill the human heart that wants the infinite because it is capable of God. In this regard, the Catechism of the Catholic Church in  Chapter 1, entitled Man is "capable" of God, reiterates the fact that the desire (that is the thirst) of God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God. God never ceases to draw man to himself and man, only in God, will find the truth and the happiness that he seeks without pause. The meaning of the human life consists in its vocation to communion with God, the source of joy.

If we were to ask those who do not yet know Christ, those who have not yet met him, even those who do not want to try, many would answer to be happy with their lot. They go to fetch water, but they do not need God. They go to the well to fetch water for the body, but do not notice that they have thirst for another water. The presence of Christ reveals to the soul its emptiness that only God's infinite love can fill. Of this speaks the Blessed Charles de Foucauld who, in his meditation, talks about the sadness that earthly passions brought to him when, still an atheist, he believed to suffocate with trespasses the thirst for God, typical of man.

 

2) The thirst of Christ.

To answer the deep thirst that our spirit has, Christ puts one condition to donate himself. He begs an "offering": that we give him water for his thirst. The water that he asks for to the Samaritan woman is an offering. Thanks to it, our hands and our hearts are open, and can thus receive much more, infinitely more.

Inspired by a painting by Duccio di Boninsegna that depicts Jesus sitting on the edge of a well, which is actually a solid marble baptismal font[1], and the Samaritan woman carrying on the head a delicately balanced fragile clay jug, I can write that Jesus needs our pitcher to draw into the well, that is, He need our freedom and our free love, that he redeems.

The spiritual journey of the Samaritan woman is proposed to us today. It is a route, that each of us is called to rediscover and to travel constantly. Even we, who are baptized, are always on the journey to become true Christians and this Gospel episode is an incentive to rediscover the importance and the meaning of our Christian life, the true desire of God that lives in us.

Proposing the Gospel of the Samaritan woman, the Church today wants to bring us to profess our faith in Christ, as this woman did, going out to announce and to testify to our brothers and sisters the joy of meeting Him and the marvels that his love accomplishes in our lives.

Faith is born from the encounter with Jesus, recognized and welcomed as a savior in whom the face of God is revealed. After the Lord has won the hearts of the Samaritan woman, her life is transformed, and she runs without delay to communicate the good news to her people. St. Augustine said that God thirsts for our thirst for Him, that is, He wants to be desired. The more the human being turns away from God, the more He pursues him with his merciful love. 

Today, the Gospel urges us to review our relationship with Jesus and to seek his face tirelessly. "It is the desire that hollows our heart" (St. Augustine) and expands it. It is the desire that makes deep the heart and the "life of a good Christian is the holy desire" (St, Augustine).

A testimony of a good Christian life is that of consecrated virgins in the world, who mortify the thirst for human love to drink only the water of life that flows from Christ and to respond to his thirst.

The consecrated celibacy “is not lack of desire, but intensity of desire" (Saint Teresa of Avila). It is a vocation that expresses how you can live a life that is only quenched by God. This life given and therefore fruitful, must be lived with an attitude of faith and spiritual joy, nourished by prayer. It must be lived with a detachment not only from marriage but also from too limited fondness to direct all energies, including the affective one, to the communion with Christ and with those who become close because of him.

The person living a consecrated virginity is a precious gift for the Church. In fact, she testifies the initial presence of the kingdom of God and the sure hope of its fulfillment and makes us more available to service. Finally let's not forget that virginity does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes it, confirms it and defends it from a reductive interpretations. It reminds the spouses that they must live marriage as an anticipation and an image of the perfect communion with God. The "you" that everyone ultimately seeks, is God: the spouse can not satisfy the limitless desire for love, the true wedding is the one with God

 

 

 

Patristic reading

Saint John Chrysostom (344/354 – 407)

Homily XXXII

 

Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting Life."

 

[1.] Scripture calls the grace of the Spirit sometimes “Fire,” sometimes “Water,” showing that these names are not descriptive of its essence, but of its operation; for the Spirit, being Invisible and Simple, cannot be made up of different substances. Now the one Jn declares, speaking thus, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with Fire” (Mt 3,11): the other, Christ, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (Jn 7,38). “But this,” saith John, “spake He of the Spirit, which they should receive.” So also conversing with the woman, He calleth the Spirit water;1 for, “Whosoever shall drink of the water which I shall give him, shall never thirst.” So also He calleth the Spirit by the name of “fire,” alluding to the rousing and warming property of grace, and its power of destroying transgressions; but by that of “water,” to declare the cleansing wrought by it, and the great refreshment which it affordeth to those minds which receive it. And with good reason; for it makes the willing soul like some2 garden thick with all manner of trees fruitful and ever-flourishing, allowing it neither to feel despondency nor the plots of Satan, and quenches3 all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

 

And observe, I pray you, the wisdom of Christ,4 how gently He leads on5 the woman; for He did not say at first, “If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink,” but when He had given her an occasion of calling Him “a Jew,” and brought her beneath the charge of having done so, repelling the accusation He saith, “If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him”; and having compelled her by His great promises to make mention6 of the Patriarch, He thus alloweth the woman to look through,7 and then when she objects, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob?” He saith not, “Yea, I am greater,” (for He would have seemed but to boast, since the proof did not as yet appear,) but by what He saith He effecteth this. For He said not simply, “I will give thee water,” but having first set that given by Jacob aside, He exalteth that given by Himself, desiring to show from the nature of the things given, how great is the interval and difference between the persons of the givers,8 and His own superiority to the Patriarch. “If,” saith He, “thou admirest Jacob because he gave thee this water, what wilt thou say if I give thee Water far better than this? Thou hast thyself been first to confess that I am greater than Jacob, by arguing against Me, and asking, ‘Art thou greater than Jacob, that thou promisest to give me better water?’ If thou receivest that Water, certainly thou wilt confess that I am greater.” Seest thou the upright judgment of the woman, giving her decision from facts, both as to the Patriarch, and as to Christ? The Jews acted not thus; when they even saw Him casting out devils, they not only did not call Him greater than the Patriarch but even said that He had a devil. Not so the woman, she draws her opinion whence Christ would have her, from the demonstration afforded by His works. For by these He justifieth Himself, saying, “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, if ye believe not Me, believe the works.” (c. x. 37, 38). And thus the woman is brought over to the faith.

 

Wherefore also He, having heard, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob,” leaveth Jacob, and speaketh concerning the water, saying, “Whosoever shall drink of this water, shall thirst again”; and He maketh His comparison, not by depreciating one, but by showing the excellence of the other; for He saith not, that “this water is naught,” nor “that it is inferior and contemptible,” but what even nature testifies that He saith: “Whosoever shall drink of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever shall drink of the Water which I shall give him, shall never thirst.” The woman before this had heard of “living Water” (v. 10), but had not known its meaning. Since because that water is called “living” which is perennial and bubbles up unceasingly from uninterrupted springs, she thought that this was the water meant. Wherefore He points out this more clearly by speaking thus, and establishing by a comparison the superiority (of the water which He would give). What then saith He? “Whosoever shall drink of the Water that I shall give him, shall never thirst.” This and what was said next especially showed the superiority, for material water possesses none of these qualities. And what is it that follows? “It shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” For as one that hath a well within him could never be seized by thirst, so neither can he that hath this Water.

 

The woman straightway believed, showing herself much wiser than Nicodemus, and not only wiser, but more manly. For he when he heard ten thousand such things neither invited any others to this hearing, nor himself spake forth openly; but she exhibited the actions of an Apostle, preaching the Gospel to all, and calling them to Jesus, and drawing a whole city forth to Him. Nicodemus when he had heard said, “How can these things be?” And when Christ set before him a clear illustration, that of “the wind,” he did not even so receive the Word. But the woman not so; at first she doubted, but afterwards receiving the Word not by any regular demonstration, but in the form of an assertion, she straightway hastened to embrace it. For when Christ said, “It shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting Life,” immediately the woman saith,

 

 

 

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[1]  It is for this reference to baptism that today this text is chosen. Lent, above all in past centuries, was for the catechumens the time of preparation to the baptism received at Easter