Locally, we tend to take water so much for granted. With the turn of the tap, we have safe clean water for drinking, bathing, cooking and washing. Many peoples in third world countries are not so fortunate. Like the Samaritan woman whom we meet in the gospel, they trek to the local well with jugs, cans or buckets and carry their water back home.
Elsewhere in our own country, water is becoming scarce. I read recently that Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam which supplies water to Las Vegas, could be dry by 2021. In Georgia, facing its worst draught in decades, questions are being raised about its border with Tennessee in the hopes that a new survey will allow that state to tap into the Tennessee River.
Today’s readings focus on water and thirst, but a different kind. Having no faith in God, the Israelites grumbled, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?” Every day, the Church recounts their resentful attitude by beginning its official daily prayer with psalm 95 in which God cautions, “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, where your fathers tempted me.” Yet, harden our hearts is what we do every time we follow the example of those disenchanted Hebrews and focus on our physical thirst while ignoring our spiritual thirst.
That is the point Jesus is trying to make in this unusual conversation with the Samaritan woman is that we all have a spiritual thirst, just as we have a physical thirst. Too often, we try to fill that thirst with something other than God.
The Samaritan woman thought that her five husbands would quench her thirst but she discovered otherwise. Many people seek to satisfy their thirst through self-indulging addictions like drinking, drugs, smoking, gambling, pornography, surfing the internet, or consumerism. Whatever our indulgences are, most likely they have not satisfied our restless hearts.
Like soda pop, they may give us a momentary lift but they can never truly quench our thirst for love. Satisfying our spiritual thirst with material things is like trying to satisfy our physical thirst with salt water. The more we drink, the thirstier we get.
The peace and love we yearn for can only be found through the saving love of God poured out into our hearts. Thirst symbolizes the absence of God in our lives…that longing within every human heart. St. Augustine talks about our hearts being restless until they find rest in God.
Since the pleasures of life fail to truly satisfy the longing of our hearts or our thirsting human spirit, the only remedy as the Samaritan woman discovered, is an intimate relationship with Jesus who provides a mysterious living water that produces a well-spring of life within us. As he said to her, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
If we want to truly experience the living water that Jesus speaks of then we must be honest with ourselves and the reality of sin in our daily lives. We cannot claim to be followers of Jesus Christ unless we choose to actively follow him. Simply put, the stronger our faith is, the less likely we will give in to temptation and sin. Granted, we are human and regardless of how strong our faith is, we will still sin, but the stronger our faith is, the more resistant we become to temptation by recognizing the destructive potential of sin on our lives. On the other hand, the weaker our faith remains, the more tolerant we become of our own sinfulness.
Sin begets sin and virtue begets virtue. When we continually give into sin, we undermine our relationship with God and sometimes with those around us. At the moment, I can imagine a fair number of you mildly protesting, “But I am not a sinner, certainly not a big time sinner.” Hopefully not, but have you given Jesus a chance to truly quench your spiritual thirst with living water?
Undoubtedly there are moments in any given day when the temptation to sin surfaces, so what do you do? Speaking from experience, I suspect you give in more often than you care to admit. After all, some sins are habit forming. And how do you feel afterwards? I would wager that your deep thirst, the thirst for living water that Jesus speaks of in the gospel, has not been quenched. That can only be done through prayer and faith. Yet, how often do we put aside time for prayer or worship, tempted instead to spend the time watching TV, shopping, surfing the internet, or any other time consuming habit? To receive the healing benefits that Jesus promises, praying is what we must choose to do whenever temptation arises for prayer is the only way we can experience the living water that we truly thirst for.
Prayer is as vital for our spiritual health as sleep is for our physical health. Just as we deliberately make time for eating, sleeping, bathing, and working, we must make time to be in touch with God. That can be done in so many ways; adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, daily mass, studying the bible, and meditation to name but a few. And of course, there is the much neglected sacrament of reconciliation which I encourage you to celebrate during Lent. If you are not deliberately putting time aside for God each day, do so in some way beginning tomorrow and you will see a difference in your life come Easter.
The contrast in attitude between the Israelites in the desert and the Samaritan woman and her neighbors raises a challenging question for us to ponder. Is our religion one that sees God as fulfilling our needs or one that recognizes that God is what we truly desire in life? Only one choice allows us to join the Samaritans in proclaiming, “We know that this is truly the savior of the world.”