HOMILY FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR A.
Rev. Fr. Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi
Did you know that the average adult can survive for seven weeks without food, but cannot live for more than five days without water? Amazing but true! Water has lots of therapeutic uses. Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase ‘water therapy’ to describe the effects of water intake on the human biological and psychological make-up. Experts say that drinking at least a litre of water a day has an astonishing effect on your health. Drinking enough water makes you feel energetic. If you have a drink of water first thing in the morning, the water flushes out the body and makes it much more able to absorb nutrients from food. Drinking safe, purified water prevents the spread of a lot of diseases. It is claimed that water therapies may be helpful in alleviating arthritis, epilepsy, bronchitis, tuberculosis, throat problems, constipation, diabetes and hypertension. Whether that’s true or not, water is needed for the production of new blood cells and muscle, helps with weight loss, increases the efficiency of the immune system, and revs up the metabolism. Water, whether it’s tap water or bottled water, is not only good for us, it’s essential for life and health! Today Jesus, our Lord, introduces us to another type of water, just as essential, if not more so: the spiritual water, the ultimate water, which He calls ‘the spring of water that assures us of eternal life’.
The First Reading (Exod. 17:3-7) underlines the importance of drinking water, and how the lack of it can lead both to individual misery and to communal unrest. In the Reading, the people of Israel murmured and grumbled about Moses because they were so thirsty. Due to their longing - their desperation - to slake their thirst, they became aggressive at Massah and Meribah. They wanted to stone Moses. They even proposed to turn back to the land of Egypt, the land of their captivity from which they escaped. If only the Israelites had been willing to thirst for the spring of life, which is God Himself, then they would not have murmured, grumbled and rebelled. The same is true for us today: if only we could continually thirst for God in the same way as we thirst for the physical necessities of life, then we would continually experience the presence of God among us. Despite the Israelites’ rebellion, the Lord provided them with the water for which they begged. The Gospel serves to remind us, however, that there is a supernatural – or rather, a ‘supra-natural’ - spring of water that never runs dry, supra-natural water that can satisfy that craving of our souls and spirits for God.
The scene of the Gospel (John 4:5-42) shows Jesus, a Jew, tired and having to sit down beside the historic Jacob’s well. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water from the well at Sychar, and a discussion ensues. The setting is unusual in several ways because several boundaries are crossed. A man and a woman who are strangers to each other, speak to each other; a Jew and a Samaritan speak to each other; the God-Man and His beloved creature speak to each other. Jesus ask her to get him a drink, even though He has been sitting beside the well in advance of the woman’s arrival. The woman reminds Him of His cultural origin and of the longstanding rift (cf. 2Kings 17:1ff) that has existed between Jews and Samaritans. Jesus, who did not draw water from the well even though he was sitting beside it, promises her LIVING WATER. The woman reminds him of the historical importance of the well. Jesus expands on what He means by LIVING WATER. Then the woman asks for that water, both so that she won’t be thirsty again and also that she won’t have to keep coming to the well to draw water. So, Jesus helps her to understand what he actually means by the expression LIVING WATER by engaging her in deep spiritual discussion rather than in personable chit-chat. Having discovered to her joy that Jesus is indeed the long-awaited Messiah, the woman runs to tell her fellow people and encourages them to come and listen to Jesus for themselves. The Samaritans allow Him, a Jew, to be with them for two days, and the result is that some of them come to believe that Jesus is indeed the Saviour.
What is the significance of living water? For the Jews, living water was the oxygenated water of a running stream over against the murky, undrinkable, unmoving water of a stagnant pool. Think for a moment about the water in the well of Jacob: that water wouldn’t be classed as ‘living water’ since it didn’t come from a spring. Rainwater percolated into it through the ground. This Jewish notion of ‘living water’ in a physical sense acts as a springboard for us to understand what ‘living water’ is in a spiritual sense. It’s the water of life in its absolute fullness. The Living Water that Christ offers us has the following features:
The LIVING WATER of God is barrier-breaking and universal. It tears down every form of aggression between people and groups. The Israelites drank the water at Massah and Meribah, yet they were riven by unrest and kept on quarrelling (which is what ‘Meribah’ means). By contrast, what effect did the living water of Christ have on the Samaritan community? It did away with the aggression that the Samaritans felt towards Jews. Jesus’ offer disposed them towards a spirit of peace and acceptance. The boundary between dissenting people was breached. Remember too that the water at Massah and Meribah was given only to the Jews. The living water of Christ, however, is freely available to each and every person who is thirsting for God. ‘To anybody that is thirsty, I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life’ (Rev. 21:6). From this, we learn how the demarcations of our boundary-ridden world can be eliminated simply by drinking the living water of Christ. During this season of Lent, our prayers ought to be for all people as well as for ourselves, our abstinence ought to be for the sake of others as well as for ourselves, and our almsgiving ought to be to benefit the wider community as well as our own.
The LIVING WATER is spiritual and quenches the thirst to sin. Our Lord created a new spirit in the Samaritan woman when He exposed her sinful lifestyle to her so that she had to face up to it and change the way she was living. She listened, and the more she listened, the more she desired the teaching of our Lord. Her whole life was changed. The living water of Christ calls us to repentance and offers us the beautiful taste of new life in Christ. This is yet another important message for us during this season of Lent: the message of repentance and of a fresh beginning in Christ. True worshippers of Our Lord, the Son of God, must worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Temple in Jerusalem is no longer the focus and centre of Jewish worship of God; similarly, the Samaritans of this Gospel passage no longer needed to go to Mount Gerizim to encounter the Saviour. The Lord was present to them! The Lord can be sought and found everywhere in spirit and in truth. Only those souls that thirst for the Lord (cf. Psalm 42:1) can encounter Christ, the Living Water. This Living Water has been given to each one of us, just as the love of God which has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Second Reading; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8). God loves us so much, that those of us who love Him and do His will to the utmost of our ability are rewarded even this side of eternity with justification and peace. Just as natural water brings health and strength and is essential for our earthly existence, the Living Water of Jesus heals our brokenness, supernaturally strengthens us and assures our eternal life. With the Lord is the fountain of life (Psalm 36:9). In this season of Lent, let us ask the Lord to re-energize us physically, mentally and spiritually with His Living Water in our earthly struggles. Amen. God bless you.
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