The cycle of catechesis that, for the jubilee year, the Pope wanted to dedicate to the theme “Jesus Christ our hope” continues, even in the absence of the Wednesday hearing. This week the text sent by the Pontiff concerns the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan. Here is the full text:
Reading: Jn 4.10
(Jesus said to the Samaritan woman 🙂 “If you knew the gift of God and who is the one who says to you:” Give me to drink! “, You would have asked him and he would have given you alive water”.
Dear brothers and sisters,
After meditating on the meeting of Jesus with Nicodemus, who had gone to look for Jesus, today we reflect on those moments in which he seems that he was waiting for us right there, at that intersection of our life. These are meetings that surprise us, and at the beginning perhaps we are also a little wary: we try to be prudent and to understand what is going on.
This was probably also the experience of the Samaritan woman, which is talked about in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John (cf. 4.5-26). She did not expect to find a man on the well at noon, on the contrary he hoped he did not find anyone. In fact, it goes to get water on the well in an unusual hour, when it is very hot. Perhaps this woman is ashamed of her life, perhaps she felt judged, condemned, not understood, and for this she is isolated, she broke the relationships with everyone.
To go to Galilee from Judea, Jesus could have chosen another road and not cross Samaria. It would have been safer, given the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. Instead he wants to go from there and stops at that well at that hour! Jesus awaits us and finds himself just when we think that there is no more hope for us. The well, in the ancient Middle East, is a meeting place, where marriages are sometimes combined, it is a place of engagement. Jesus wants to help this woman understand where to seek the real answer to her desire to be loved.
The theme of desire is essential to understand this meeting. Jesus is the first to express his desire: “Give me to drink!” (v. 10). In order to open a dialogue, Jesus shows up weak, so he puts the other person at ease, makes sure that he does not frighten. Thirst is often, even in the Bible, the image of desire. But Jesus here is thirsty first of all of the salvation of that woman. “He who asked for a drink – says Sant’Agostino – was thirsty for the faith of this woman”. (1)
If Nicodemus had gone to Jesus at night, here Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at noon, the moment in which there is more light. It is in fact a moment of revelation. Jesus makes himself known by her as the Messiah and also sheds light on her life. It helps her to reread her story newly, which is complicated and painful: He has had five husbands and is now with a sixth that is not husband. The number six is not accidental, but usually indicates imperfection. Perhaps it is an allusion to the seventh groom, what will finally be able to satiate the desire of this woman to be really loved. And that groom can only be Jesus.
When he realizes that Jesus knows his life, the woman moves the discussion to the religious question that divided Jews and Samaritans. This sometimes happens to us while praying: when God is touching our life with his problems, we sometimes lose ourselves in reflections that give us the illusion of a successful prayer. In fact, we raised some protective barriers.
The Lord, however, is increasingly bigger, and that Samaritan woman, to whom according to the cultural schemes it should not even have spoken, gives the highest revelation: it talks to her of the father, who must be worshiped in spirit and truth. And when she, once again surprised, observes that it is better to wait for the messiah on these things, he says to her: “It is I, who speak with you” (v. 26). It is like a declaration of love: the one who aspects are me; He who can finally respond to your desire to be loved.
At that point the woman runs to call the people of the village, why It is precisely from the experience of feeling loved that the mission arises. And which announcement will he ever have brought if not his experience of being understood, welcomed, forgiven? It is an image that should make us reflect on our search for new ways to evangelize.
Just like a person in love, the Samaritan forgets her amphora at the foot of Jesus. The weight of that amphora on her head, every time she returned home, reminded her of her condition, her troubled life. But now the amphora is deposited at the feet of Jesus. The past is no longer a weight; She is reconciled. And this is the case for us too: To go to announce the Gospel, we need before weakening the weight of our history at the foot of the Lord, deliver to him the weight of our past. Only reconciled people can bring the Gospel. Dear brothers and dear sisters, let’s not lose hope! Even if our history appears to be heavy, complicated, perhaps even ruined, we always have the opportunity to deliver it to God and to start again our journey. God is mercy and always awaits us!
