The Thirst for Divine Knowledge

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for the Third Sunday of Lent take us from the temptation in the desert where there is little life and distraction to the community well, the hub of life and the mission from the Father to quench the thirst of people for understanding of the Divine. Jesus is left alone by the well in Samaria, according to the Gospel of John. The “woman at the well” is a Samaritan who comes to the well alone avoiding the social contact with the other women of her community. The passage from John makes it clear that the disciples are scandalized by Jesus dialogue with this woman who is thirsting for communion with the love of God. She is aware of the Messiah from the Jewish tradition and this man who has violated the social norms by speaking to a woman and a Samaritan in private appears to be prophetic about the state of her relationships with men. The water He offers is to be life for her for eternity. She will not thirst for intimacy again. The realization of this promise will be experienced through faith, as Paul proclaims in the letter to the Romans. The Spirit of God will be indwelling and it will make the love of the Divine apparent to us. Paul reminds that the evidence of the love of the Divine for humanity lies in the accomplishing of the will of the Father that the Divine Son, the Messiah, would die, by crucifixion, not “for a good man” as Paul suggests many of us might do, but for all humanity, for eternity. The psalmist proclaims the desire that we would hear the “word of the Lord” and be different from our ancestors and or own recent past. We hear the Lord as the quenching of our thirst to be whole in and through the intimacy of our indwelling Spirit with the Divine.