Fr. Michael Williams

At the very beginning of St. John’s gospel the evangelist tells us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. God became man.

We could be tempted to think that because Jesus was both God and man, human frailty and limitation was easy for him. But this is not so. Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus was “tired by the journey” and so he took some rest at Jacob’s well, hoping to refresh himself. Jesus felt the limitations of any human being. When the Samaritan woman comes along he asks her for “a drink”. Jesus’ tiredness and thirst are apparent. Yet he uses his human frailty as an opportunity to begin a conversation with another frail human being.

The woman Jesus speaks to did not have much going for her in the eyes of her contemporary world. Firstly, we know that as a Samaritan she would have been looked down upon by Jews as part of a schismatic group. “The Jews would not have anything to do with the Samaritans” (Wright). Jews would not associate with Samaritans, yet here we have Jesus asking this Samaritan woman for a drink. It was also risky for Jesus to be alone with this woman at the well. She obviously had a bad reputation in the town. It was normal for the women to come to the well at a cooler time of the day, early morning or late afternoon. But this woman comes for her water when she expects no one to be around. Her reputation of immoral living goes before her.

But Jesus came to save what was lost and to restore what was broken. Jesus’ honest conversation with the Samaritan woman is an attempt by the Lord to raise her up. The woman is thinking purely on a material level, as many of us do. She is thinking only in terms of physical thirst. But Jesus is thinking on another level. He is thinking more spiritually. He wants the woman to have “the water [which] will turn into a spring inside her, welling up to eternal life”. Jesus wants her, and us all, to be refreshed at the spring of eternal life, the well of salvation. The reason God became man, was so that men and women could be raised up to eternal life.

The woman does recognise that Jesus has something unique about him, although she struggles to understand who exactly he is. Nevertheless, she returns to her own town telling the people about her conversation with Jesus. Her testimony and witness leads “many more coming to believe” recognising that Jesus is “the Saviour of the world”.

At Mass we come to the well of salvation. As we are refreshed by this living water, like the woman in the well, let us go to share the good news of Christ with others. For he alone is “the Saviour of the world”, the one who came down from heaven, so as to raise us up to heaven.