All’s WELL that ends WELL! And this story really ends, very well. It could have ended in a marriage, for whenever the Old Testament has someone meeting a woman at the well, they are thinking marriage; like Moses and Jacob. Well (no pun intended this time), there was no marriage in this incident but boy, did they have a discussion about it and not one, but five!  

 St Augustine teaches us that theologically, the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman is to reveal to us, that the Samaritan woman is a symbol of the Church, the bride of Christ; Jesus is the bridegroom.  Jesus is going to gather in from sinful humanity, represented in our narrative, by this sinful woman.  He will pursue her relentlessly to bring her to the faith; back to Him, the bridegroom (that’s why this text features as a Lenten Sunday Gospel; Jesus pursues us, relentlessly). 

What is Jesus really doing at this well?  He has trudged three hundred miles to Jacob’s well in the Samaritan country on His way to Galilee and has stopped to quench His thirst.  He encounters a Samaritan woman who technically was His enemy.

The Jews and Samaritans had a long standing feud going back to 722 BC when Tilglath Pilesar of Assyria moved into the Northern Kingdom of the ten tribes of Israel. He had taken thirty thousand Jews into exile and scattered them among the nations. Many foreigners were also brought into this region creating a population of half breeds; something that a Jew, faithful through the exile, looked at, with disgust. This hatred was further entrenched when the temple was being rebuilt at the time of Prophet Haggai. The Samaritans offered to help, but were turned down and so they worshiped on Mount Gerizim, in Samaria, growing in hatred for the Jews.

 In order to win her over, Jesus crosses boundaries. He is a Jew, she is a Samaritan; He is a man, she is woman; He is God and she is a sinner. And here we need to take a pause, for many a zealous preacher have read into her life of five husbands and her presence at noon at the well, as well as the accusation of her as a prostitute.  Let’s just call her a five time loser to perhaps five different losers, who could have deserted or divorced her. In any case, she is living with a man who is not married to her, which makes her trip to the well at noon understandable; for she would not want the village gossipers who were already wagging their tongues behind her back, to now do it in her presence.

What Jesus does next is amazing. Having gently dismissed her barbs and jokes at His expense (He has no bucket and wants to give her water), He offers her living water. What a strange twist this must have been! For a woman who always expected the men in her life to take things from her, she finds a man who wants to give her something for a change; and change is in the air!

Bishop Robert Barron makes an interesting point. “Divine Mercy”, he says “is not merely sanative but divinizing.” Let me explain that. Jesus does not simply heal us from what’s wrong with us but He “wants to draw us into divine life, to share His life with us.” The revelation of Jesus’ divine presence is progressive. She sees Him first as a stranger, then a Jew, a prophet and finally, as the Messiah. No wonder she is able to put down her pot and with it, her sinful past. She walks away from this well, for this is her moment of conversion.

Think about it, we too have our wells! St Augustine calls ‘these wells’ symbols of concupiscent desire or sinful desire. We come each day to this well to draw from it, in the hope of being satisfied and happy. These wells are wells of lust, greed and hate, or whatever we have named our well.  We drink, but are never satisfied. The only way out, is to abandon our wells and go to Jesus, the one who has ‘living water’.

But the powerful message of this Sunday’s gospel does not merely end with a call to conversion. Conversion must lead to proclamation! The Samaritan woman becomes the first evangelizer in the gospel of John. In the previous chapter of John (chapter 3), Nicodemus comes by night to Jesus and we do not even know if this meeting leads to his conversion, much less the Jews. In contrast, this nameless half-bred Samaritan woman, who chances upon the Lord, brings in a town full of converts who want the Lord to stay with them.

D. T. Niles defines evangelization as “one beggar telling another beggar where there is bread.” The woman at the well needs to beg no more! Even more, she was the only woman in the first century to receive ‘in-house’ plumbing, living water- a  conversion gift from Jesus. All’s WELL that ends WELL.

Fr Warner D’souza

With much inspiration from Bishop Robert Barron and Dr Brant Pitre. (Say a prayer for these great Catholic evangelizers).