Thirsting for Our Salvation

On Wednesday, 26 March 2025, the Holy Father, in his General Audience, reflected on the Lord's meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

After contemplating the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, who had gone in search of Jesus, today we will reflect on those moments in which it really seems that He is waiting right there, at that crossroads in our life. They are encounters that surprise us, and at the beginning perhaps we are even a little diffident; we try to be prudent and to understand what is happening.

This was probably also the experience of the Samaritan woman, mentioned in chapter four of John’s Gospel (cf. 4:5-26). She did not expect to find a man at the well at noon; indeed she hoped to find no one at all. In fact, she goes to fetch water from the well at an unusual hour, when it is very hot. Perhaps this woman is ashamed of her life, perhaps she has felt judged, condemned, misunderstood, and for this reason she has isolated herself, she has broken off relations with everyone.

To go to Galilee from Judea, Jesus would have been able to choose another road and not pass through Samaria. It would also have been safer, given the tense relations between the Jews and the Samaritans. Instead, He wants to pass through there, and He stops at that very well, right at that time! Jesus waits for us and lets Himself be found precisely when we think that there is no hope left for us. The well, in the ancient Middle East, is a place of encounter, where at times marriages are arranged; it is a place of betrothal. Jesus wants to help this woman understand where to find the true answer to her desire to be loved.

The theme of desire is fundamental to understanding this encounter. Jesus is the first to express His desire: “Give me a drink” (v. 10). In order to start a conversation, Jesus makes Himself appear weak, putting the other person at ease, making sure that she is not frightened. Thirst is often the image of desire, even in the Bible. But Jesus here thirsts first of all for that woman’s salvation. “He who was asking drink”, says Saint Augustine, “was thirsting for the faith of the woman herself” (Homily 15, 11).

Whereas Nicodemus had gone to Jesus at night, here Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at midday, the time when there is most light. It is indeed a moment of revelation. Jesus makes Himself known to her as the Messiah and also sheds light on her life. He helps her to reread her history, which is complicated and painful, in a new way: she has had five husbands and is now with a sixth who is not a husband. The number six is not accidental, but usually indicates imperfection. Perhaps it is an allusion to the seventh bridegroom, the one who will finally satiate this woman’s desire to be truly loved. And that bridegroom can only be Jesus.

When she realizes that Jesus knows her life, the woman shifts the conversion to the religious question that divided Jews and Samaritans. This sometimes happens to us too when we pray: at the moment in which God is touching our life, with its problems, we lose ourselves at times in reflections that give us the illusion of a successful prayer. In reality, we have raised defensive barriers. However, the Lord is always greater, and He gives that Samaritan woman, to whom according to cultural precepts He should not even have spoken, the highest revelation: He speaks to her of the Father, who is to be adored in spirit and truth. And when she, once again surprised, observes that on these things it is better to wait for the Messiah, He tells her: “I am he, the one who is speaking with you” (v. 26). It is like a declaration of love: I am the One you are waiting for, the One who can finally respond to your desire to be loved.

At that point the woman runs to call the people of the village, because mission springs precisely from the experience of feeling loved. And what proclamation could she have brought, if not her 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 water jar, leaving it at Jesus’ feet. The weight of that jar on her head, every time she returned home, reminded her of her situation, her troubled life. But now the jar is left at Jesus’ feet. The past is no longer a burden; she is reconciled. And it is like this for us too: to go and proclaim the Gospel, we first need to set down the burden of our history at the Lord’s feet, to consign to Him the weight of our past. Only reconciled people can bring the Gospel.

Dear brothers and dear sisters, let us not lose hope! Even if our history appears burdensome, complicated, perhaps even ruined to us, we always have the possibility of consigning it to God and setting out anew on our journey. God is merciful, and awaits us always!

L'Osservatore Romano
26 March 2025