Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent

In 1888, a man picked up a newspaper and was shocked to see his own obituary in the headlines. It was an error, of course. His brother was the one who died, but the newspaper mistakenly ran the story about him. However, he was even more shocked when he read in his obit that he had made his fortune by finding new ways to kill people. It was true; he was a wealthy munitions manufacturer, the inventor of dynamite in fact. But to read that he would be remembered as the man who got rich by inventing new ways to kill people was too much for him to bear. That very morning his life took on a new direction. He decided to devote his energies and his wealth to advancing peace and human progress and to fund awards for others who did the same. The man was Alfred Nobel and his award would come to be known as the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel was given a gift few of us ever get; he read his own obituary and what he read shocked him into change.

The story of the woman at the well is the story of human emptiness and the false ways in which we try to fill it. With 5 ex-husbands and 1 live-in boyfriend, the Samaritan woman was the embodiment of someone who looked for love in all the wrong places. She is so like us who often think that happiness waits for us just around the corner - in that new relationship, that big dollar job, in chasing after the esteem of others. Happiness isn’t waiting for us around the corner. It waits for us by the well.

But her emptiness is not the point, really. This is the story of the God who waits for us by the well of all our discontents and unfulfilled efforts at happiness. It is the story of how, in the encounter with Christ, we are reawakened to the knowledge that our life’s true happiness and perfect fulfillment can only be found in Him for Whom we were created; in Christ Himself.

John Paul II, in a homily given during World Youth Day, said this, "It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise.”

Lent invites us to become Christians “ever anew” (B.XVI). This asks of us two things: a turning away from those things which take us away from our life’s true happiness – a turning from sin – and a deeper turning to Christ in confidence and trust to make us new again. This is never a one-time event, but a constant process of being converted, of exchanging one life for another.

Consider the deepest thirsts of your life, whatever they may be, but don’t stop there. What you thirst for is not around the corner waiting for you somewhere. It’s here! Christ is here. He thirsts for you. He invites each of us to drink deeply of Him, to exchange one life for another and become Christians anew.

Nobel did that when he realized the shocking truth of what his legacy would be. The woman of Samaria did it when she sat with Jesus of Nazareth by a well and heard Him say, “If you only knew the gift of God … you would ask and He would give you living waters…”

John’s Gospel tells us that she left behind her water jar and ran to tell others about the prophet who had told her everything she had done. A small but important detail. Our water jars are far too puny to hold that for which we truly thirst. It’s time to leave our empty water jars behind – the falsehoods and mediocrities we so often settle for, and let Jesus fill us with Living Water, Himself, so that we will never thirst again.