From: John 4: 5-42
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
[5] He (Jesus) came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field
that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. [6] Jacob's well was there, and so
Jesus, wearied as He was with His journey, sat down beside the well.
It was about the sixth hour.
[7] There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her,
"Give Me a drink." [8] For His disciples had gone away into the city
to buy food. [9] The Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that you,
a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no
dealings with Samaritans. [10] Jesus answered her, "If you knew the
gift of God, and Who it is that is saying to you, 'Give Me a drink,'
you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."
[11] The woman said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and
the well is deep; where do You get that living water? [12] Are You
greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it
himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" [13] Jesus said to her, "Every
one who drinks of this water will thirst again, [14] but whoever drinks
of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water I shall
give him become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
[15] The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not
thirst, nor come here to draw."
[16] Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." [17] The
woman answered Him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are
right in saying, 'I have no husband.'; [18] for you have had five
husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said
truly." [19] The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a
prophet. [20] Our fathers worshipped on this mountain; and you say in
Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." [21] Jesus said to
her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain
nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. [22] You worship what
you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the
Jews. [23] But the hour is coming and now is, when the true
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the
Father seeks to worship Him. [24] God is spirit, and those who worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and truth." [25] The woman said to Him,
"I know that the Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when He
comes, He will show us all things." [26] Jesus said to her, "I who
speak to you am He."
[27] Just then the disciples came. They marvelled that He was talking
with a woman, but none said, "What do you wish?" or, "Why are you talking
with her?" [28] So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the
city, and said to the people, [29] "Come, see a man who told me all that
I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" [30] They went out of the city and
were coming to Him.
[31] Meanwhile the disciples besought Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."
[32] But He said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know."
[33] So the disciples said to one another, "Has any one brought Him
food?" [34] Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who
sent Me, and to accomplish His work. [35] Do you not say, 'There are yet
four months, then comes the harvest'? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and
see how the fields are already white for harvest. [36] He who reaps
receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and
reaper may rejoice together. [37] For here the saying holds true, 'One
sows and another reaps.' [38] I sent you to reap that for which you did
not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
[39] Many Samaritans from that city believed in Him because of the
woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." [40] So when the
Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them; and He stayed
there two days. [41] And many more believed because of His word. [42]
They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of your words that we
believe, for we have heard ourselves, and we know that this is indeed
the Savior of the world."
Commentary:
4-5. There are two normal routes for going from Judea to Galilee. The
shorter one went through the city of Samaria; the other, which followed
the Jordan, was longer. Jesus took the Samaria route, perhaps not just
because it was shorter and busier but also to have a chance of
preaching to the Samaritans. When He was approaching Samaria, near
Sychar, the present-day El 'Askar, at the foot of Mount Ebal, He met
this Samaritan woman.
6. The Gospels, particularly St. John's, sometimes gives us a little
bit of information which seem irrelevant but really are not. Like us,
Jesus did get tired, He needed to take regular rest, He felt hunger and
thirst; but despite His tiredness He does not waste an opportunity to
do good to souls.
"Recollect yourselves and go over the scene again slowly in your
minds. Jesus Christ, "perfectus Deus, perfectus homo", is tired out
from His travels and His apostolic work. Perhaps there have been times
when the same thing has happened to you and you have ended up worn out,
because you have reached the limit of your resources. It is a touching
sight to see our Master so exhausted. He is hungry too: His disciples
have gone to a neighboring village to look for food. And He is thirsty
[...].
"Whenever we get tired--in our work, in our studies, in our apostolic
endeavors--when our horizon is darkened by lowering clouds, then let us
turn our eyes to Jesus, to Jesus who is so good, and who also gets
tired; to Jesus who is hungry and suffers thirst. Lord, how well you
make yourself understood! How lovable you are! You show us that you
are just like us, in everything but sin, so that we can feel utterly
sure that, together with you, we can conquer all our evil inclinations,
all our faults. For neither weariness nor hunger matters, nor thirst,
nor tears...since Christ also grew weary, knew hunger, was thirsty, and
wept. What is important is that we struggle to fulfill the will of our
Heavenly Father, battling away goodheartedly, for our Lord is always at
our side" ([St] J. Escriva, "Friends of God", 176 and 201).
7. Jesus has come to save what was lost. He spares no effort in this
mission. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans was proverbial; but
Jesus embraced everyone, He loved all souls and He shed His blood for
each and every person. He begins His conversation with this woman, by
asking a favor of her--which indicates God's great respect for us: here
we have Almighty God asking a mere creature to do Him a favor. "Give
Me a drink": Jesus makes this request not just to share His physical
thirst but because His love made Him thirst for the salvation of all
men. When nailed to the cross He again said: "I thirst" (John 19:28).
9. The Samaritan woman's reply starts the dialogue and shows how well
she is responding to the action of grace in her soul: her readiness to
talk to Christ, who was a Jew, is the first stage in her change of
heart. Later (verse 11), by taking a real interest in what Christ is
saying, she opens up further to God's influence. Her religious
feelings begin to revive ("our father Jacob": verse 12). Jesus rewards
her and she replies truthfully: "I have no husband" (verse 17,
omitted); and, seeing that Jesus has penetrated the intimacy of her
conscience, she makes an act of faith: "I perceive that You are a
prophet" (verse 19).
10. As in His dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus makes use of common
expressions, to get across teachings of a much deeper nature. Everyone
knows from experience that water is absolutely necessary for human
life; similarly, the grace of Christ is absolutely necessary for
supernatural life. The water which can truly quench man's thirst does
not come from this or any other well: it is Christ's grace, the "living
water" which provides eternal life.
Once again, taking occasion of human interests and preoccupations,
Jesus awakes a desire for things supernatural; in the same way as He
led St. Peter and others away from their work as fishermen to involve
them in the apostolic work of being fishers of men, He leads the
Samaritan woman away from her chore of drawing water from the well to
the point where she desires to find this better water which wells up to
eternal life (verse 14).
13-14. Our Lord's reply is surprising and really captures the woman's
attention. Here is something greater than Jacob, someone offering her
water that will quench her thirst once and for all. Christ is
referring to the change worked in every person by sanctifying grace, a
share in God's own life, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul,
the great gift which those who believe in Him will receive.
We worry about the future, we are full of desires to be happy and at
peace; a person who receives our Lord and remains united to Him as a
branch to the vine (cf. John 15:4-5) will not only slake his thirst but
become a well of living water (cf. John 7:37-39).
16-19. Although the woman cannot yet realize the deep meaning of what
He is saying, Jesus uses her growing interest to reveal to her His
divinity, little by little: He shows that He knows about her life, the
secrets of her heart; He can read her conscience. In this way, He
gives her enough to motivate her to make her first act of faith: "I
perceive that You are a prophet". Her conversion has begun.
20. The origin of the Samaritan people goes back to the period of the
conquest of Samaria by the Assyrians in the eight century before Christ
(cf. 2 Kings 13:24-31). They were foreigners who very quickly
integrated with the Israelites in the region. After the Babylonian
captivity they tried to ally themselves with the Jews for political
reasons and to contribute to the rebuilding of the temple, but the Jews
would have none of them. From that time onwards the Jews and the
Samaritans were always hostile to each other (cf. Ezra 4:1ff; John
4:9).
On this occasion, the Samaritan woman, now fully aware that she is
speaking to someone of authority, asks our Lord one of the key
questions affecting the religious life of the two peoples: where was
the right place to offer worship to God; the Jews held that only
Jerusalem would do; whereas the Samaritans claimed that the shrine
erected on Mount Gerizim was also legitimate (they based their claim on
some passages in the Pentateuch: cf. Genesis 12:7; 33:20; 22:2).
21-24. Jesus not only answers the question but takes advantage of it to
confirm the value of the teachings of the prophets and thereby reaffirm
revealed truth: the Samaritans are in the dark about many of God's
plans because they do not accept any revelation not found in the first
five books of Sacred Scripture, that is, in the Law of Moses; the Jews,
on the other hand, are much nearer the truth because they accept the
whole of the Old Testament. But both Samaritans and Jews need to open
themselves to the new Revelation of Jesus Christ. With the coming of
the Messiah, whom both peoples are awaiting, and who is the true
dwelling-place of God among men (cf. John 2:19), the new, definitive,
Alliance has begun; and neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem count any more;
what the Father wishes is for all to accept the Messiah, His Son, the
new temple of God, by offering Him a form of worship which comes right
from the heart (cf. John 12:1; 2 Timothy 2:22) and which the Spirit of
God Himself stirs people to render (cf. Romans 8:15).
This is why the Church's solemn Magisterium teaches that through
Baptism we become true worshippers of God: "By Baptism men are grafted
into the paschal mystery of Christ; they die with him, are buried with
Him, and rise with Him. They receive the spirit of adoption as sons
'in which we cry, Abba, Father' (Romans 8:15) and thus become true
adorers as the Father seeks" (Vatican II, "Sacrosanctum Concilium",
6).
25-26. This is the last stage in the Samaritan woman's conversion: she
has come from acknowledging her sins to accepting the true teaching
about worshipping the Father in spirit and truth. But she still has to
recognize Jesus as the Messiah; on this subject she simply confesses
her ignorance. Seeing that she is favorably disposed, Jesus explicitly
reveals that He is the Messiah: "I who speak to you am He".
These words of our Lord are especially significant: He declares that He
is the Messiah, and He uses words--'I...am He"--which evoke the words
Yahweh used to reveal Himself to Moses (cf. Exodus 3:14) and which on
Jesus' lips indicate a revelation not only of His messiahship but also
of His divinity (cf. John 8:24, 28, 58; 18:6).
27. "During the course of His life on earth, Jesus our Lord had all
manner of insults heaped upon Him and was mistreated in every way
possible. Remember the way it was rumored that He was a trouble-maker
and how He was said to possessed (cf. Matthew 11:18). At other times,
demonstrations of His infinite Love were deliberately misinterpreted, and
He was accused of being a friend of sinners (cf. Matthew 9:11).
"Later on He, who personified penance and moderation, was accused of
haunting the tables of the rich (cf. Luke 19:7). He was also
contemptuously referred to as "fabri filius" (Matthew 13:55), the
carpenter's son, the worker's son, as if this were an insult. He allowed
Himself to be denounced as a glutton and a drunkard....He let His enemies
accuse Him of everything, except that He was not chaste. On this point
He sealed their lips, because He wanted us to keep a vivid memory of His
immaculate example--a wonderful example of purity, of cleanliness, of
light, of a love that can set the whole world on fire in order to purify
it.
"For myself, I always like to consider holy purity in the light of our
Lord's own behavior. In practicing this virtue, what refinement He
showed! See what St. John says about Jesus when "fatigatus ex itinere,
sedebat sic super fontem" (John 4:6), wearied as He was from the journey,
He was sitting by the well. [...]
"But tired though His body is, His thirst for souls is even greater. So
when the Samaritan woman, the sinner, arrives, Christ with His priestly
heart turns eagerly to save the lost sheep, and He forgets His tiredness,
His hunger and His thirst.
Our Lord was busy with this great work of charity the Apostles came back
from the village, and they "mirabantur quia cum muliere loquebatur"
(John 4:27), they were astonished to find Him taking to a woman alone.
How careful He was! What love He had for the beautiful virtue of holy
purity, that virtue which helps us to be stronger, more manly, more
fruitful, better able to work for God, and more capable of undertaking
great things!" ([St] J. Escriva, "Friends of God", 176).
28-30. Grace brings about an amazing change in this woman. Now her whole
thinking centers around Jesus; she forgets what brought her to the well'
she leaves her pitcher behind her and goes off to the town to tell people
about her discovery. "The Apostles, when they were called, left their
nets; this woman leaves her water jar and proclaims the Gospel, calling
not just one person but influencing the whole city" (St. John Chrysostom,
"Hom. on St. John", 33). Every genuine conversion is necessarily
projected towards others, in a desire to have them share in the joy of
encountering Jesus.
32-38. Our Lord uses the occasion to speak about a spiritual form of
food--doing the will of God. He has just brought about the conversion of
a sinful woman and His spirit feels replete. The conversion of souls
must be the Apostles' food also, and the food of all those who through
priestly ordination are sacramentally associated with Christ's ministry
(cf. 1 Corinthians 4:9-15; 2 Corinthians 4:7-12; 11:27-29). Apostolic
work sometimes means sowing, with no apparent results, and sometimes
reaping where others sowed. The Apostles will reap what was generously
sown by the patriarchs and prophets and especially by Christ. And they
in their turn must prepare the ground, with the same generosity, so that
others can later reap the harvest.
But it is not only ministers who have this apostolic role: all the
faithful are called to take part in the work of apostolate: "Since all
Christians have different gifts they should collaborate in the work of
the Gospel, each according to his opportunity, ability, charism and
ministry; all who sow and reap, plant and water, should be one so that
'working together for the same end in a free and orderly manner' they
might together devote their powers to the building up of the Church
(Vatican II, "Ad Gentes", 28).
39-42. This episode shows a whole evangelization process at work,
beginning with the Samaritan woman's enthusiasm. 'The same think
happens today with those who are outside, who are not Christians: they
receive tidings of Christ through Christian friends; like that woman,
they learn of Christ through the Church; then they come to Christ, that
is, they believe in Christ through this report, and then Jesus stays
two days among them and many more believe, and believe more firmly,
that He indeed is the Savior of the world" (St. Augustine, "In Ioann.
Evang.", 15, 33).
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.