Church of the
Annunciation

The woman leaves her water jar. It is a significant detail. There is no need to carry the water jar back to the village when she has received life giving water from Jesus. Jesus initiates a conversation with the woman at the well. He asks her for a drink – a culturally awkward request from a Jewish man to a Samaritan woman. But it begins a discussion on “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus inquires of her husband. The woman acknowledges that she does not have a husband. Jesus knows that she has been married 5 times and the man she is living with is not her husband. The woman begins to appreciate that Jesus is more than just a man: “You are a prophet.” When Jesus speaks of worshipping God in Spirit and truth, the woman understands that Jesus is the Messiah – the anointed one of God. The woman has come to experience a love with no comparison to the men that she has known. In the words of St. Paul, “the love of God has been poured out into her heart through the Holy Spirit.” Jesus knows everything about her and loves her. Mother Teresa of Calcutta inscribed two words in the chapel where the sisters gather for prayer and Eucharist, the two words spoken by Jesus on the cross in the Gospel according to John: “I thirst.” During Lent, we enter into conversation with Jesus to satisfy the deepest thirst of the human heart for meaning, for love, for God.