None of us have traveled the path of the Samaritan woman. With the luxury of indoor plumbing or bottled water we don’t need to trek far to quench our thirst.
There is another kind of thirst however. Namely, we thirst for what we desire, the good things of this earth: food, drink, a nice home, companionship, entertainment, a good income, peace of mind, friends and family. It is part of our nature to desire these things. This kind of thirst can be defined as horizontal thirst. It is part of our nature to desire these things.
We also have another kind of thirst that I call vertical thirst. This deeper thirst is an innate desire for meaning and purpose in life that is also built into our nature. There is nothing we can do to ignore that desire just as we cannot ignore our natural desires for food and water.
Unlike horizontal thirst, our vertical thirst cannot be satisfied by our own efforts. Only God can satisfy this thirst for he created us like that on purpose to draw us toward an intimate, personal contact with his eternal unconditional love.
Even when all our horizontal thirsts are satisfied, when we have money, success, and pleasure, we are still restless. The things of this world cannot satisfy our deeper vertical thirst for we were made to be in communion with God. As our catechism notes, God is where we find our ultimate happiness. The meaning and purpose of life, which alone will give us true happiness, comes from our friendship with Christ, not from the things that quench our horizontal thirsts.
When we forget that, when we try to satisfy our vertical thirst with only horizontal stuff, we put ourselves on the road to frustration, tragedy, and disappointment.
We are advised to drink plenty of water for the sake of good health, especially now during this coronavirus pandemic. Without water we can’t survive for long.
In the readings we find the Israelites grumbling in the desert, “Did you make us leave Egypt so that we would die here of thirst along with our livestock?” Then we encounter the woman at the well at high noon. In biblical times, women usually went to the well in the early hours of the morning so why do we find this woman alone at the well at high noon?
Many scripture scholars contend that her peers had ostracized her for living with a man who was not her husband. Perhaps she avoided them out of shame. If so, we may have more in common with her than we realize. After all, how do we feel in the sight of God and others when we have sinned?
She was living a life of alienation, loneliness and inner turmoil. She had been trying to slake her vertical thirst with horizontal stuff: human love, comfort and earthly pleasures. She learned the hard way that such a formula didn’t work. She needed to find the spring of water welling up to eternal life. She found that in Christ, whom she met at the well.
When Jesus reveals himself to her, her life turns around. She may have once considered herself beyond redemption but then it hits her, she has been saved! Transformed by the realization that she has found the Messiah, she runs off into town to share the good news with everyone else.
Clearly the Holy Spirit was at work in the midst of all this. Many in the town also believed in Jesus and begged him to stay. They regarded him as the Savior of the world, the only time in the gospels where Jesus as a man is called that.
The woman and the people of her town had been wandering through a spiritual desert, slowly dying a death of frustration and perhaps boredom. They may have been enjoying the material pleasures of life and prosperity but they were thirsting for something greater, which was quenched by Christ himself.
We need look no further for the secret to happiness than Christ. He is the rock and the water flowing in the desert of this fallen world. If we make satisfying our vertical thirst our first priority by loving God and our neighbor, then the happiness we seek through our horizontal thirsts will be quenched as well.
God’s will for us is to love one another, to care as much about the needs of those around us, both materially and spiritually, as we do about our own needs. God also wants us to think well of others, to speak well of others and to act well towards others. That is what almsgiving is all about.
Speaking of alms, since you aren’t able to be physically present here as I celebrate Mass, please consider mailing your contribution to the parish. Your support is still very critical in this trying time.
Just as the woman and the town encountered Jesus at the well, you and I can encounter Jesus in our time of prayer. The church is open during the day for you to stop by and pray. In the solitude of your home, take time to ponder the readings of the day, using the Word Among Us, or go on line to Give Us This Day.net or the Magnificat. Both of these missals are making their digital websites available to you during these challenging times.
Viruses have come and gone in our lifetime but none has impacted the lives of so many, disrupting the global economy, closing schools and work places, compelling people to cancel or alter travel plans, to hoarding basic supplies like toilet paper and water, as they prepare to isolate themselves from one another. But this is not a time for us to isolate ourselves from God. While we may not be literally thirsting for water, unlike the Israelites in the desert or the woman at the well, we are thirsting for things that give us relief, things which only God can satisfy.
As Jesus said to the woman, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.”