SPEAKER_00: There are some encounters in life after which nothing can remain the same.
SPEAKER_00: You may try to return to your routine, to the old patterns, the old excuses.
SPEAKER_00: But once you've truly encountered someone who sees you completely and loves you anyway, you cannot remain the way you were.
SPEAKER_00: This is the drama that's being played out today in today's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does not meet the Samaritan woman in the temple or in a synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: He meets her at a well in the middle of an ordinary day, in the heat of the afternoon, in the middle of her complicated life.
SPEAKER_00: And that matters because it tells us something about God.
SPEAKER_00: God does not wait for us to become worthy before He comes looking for us.
SPEAKER_00: He meets us where we are.
SPEAKER_00: He enters the dust of our lives, he comes to the places we would rather keep hidden.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to the well.
SPEAKER_00: And this woman is carrying far more than a water jug.
SPEAKER_00: She's carrying shame, she's carrying disappointment, she's carrying a past she cannot rewrite.
SPEAKER_00: She's carrying thirst.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're honest, so are we.
SPEAKER_00: Some come to church carrying grief, some come carrying resentment or private sin.
SPEAKER_00: Some carry loneliness, some carry a spiritual dryness that has lasted so long they have already made peace with it.
SPEAKER_00: Into all of that Jesus says, Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_00: At first it sounds strange.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of God asks her for something.
SPEAKER_00: But this is how divine love works.
SPEAKER_00: God approaches with humility.
SPEAKER_00: He does not force his way into our lives, he invites, he engages, he begins a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: But the conversation quickly goes deeper.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not really speaking about well water.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about the restlessness in every person that no created thing can ever satisfy.
SPEAKER_00: This woman has been thirsty for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Thirsty for love, thirsty for stability, for meaning, and she's searched for it in many wrong places.
SPEAKER_00: She's had five husbands, and the man she now lives with is not her husband.
SPEAKER_00: Her life has been a search, and Jesus touches that place not to humiliate her, not to condemn her, but to free her.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the greatest truths of the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus never reveals our wounds in order to shame us.
SPEAKER_00: He reveals them in order to heal us, to set us free.
SPEAKER_00: The devil exposes our sin to accuse us and to ridicule us.
SPEAKER_00: Christ exposes sin to save us.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why, and this is what must have shattered her heart.
SPEAKER_00: Because most of us live with one great fear.
SPEAKER_00: If people really knew everything about me, they would leave me.
SPEAKER_00: But here is Christ who knows everything and still says and still stays.
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything and still speaks to her.
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything and still offers her living water.
SPEAKER_00: And that changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: She came to the well for water.
SPEAKER_00: She leaves having found something.
SPEAKER_00: Then the gospel gives us a small but powerful detail.
SPEAKER_00: She leaves behind her water jar.
SPEAKER_00: This detail is not accidental.
SPEAKER_00: She leaves the very thing that she came for because she has found something greater.
SPEAKER_00: The old errand suddenly seems less important because she has encountered Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And then she runs into town and says, Come and see this man who told me everything I have done.
SPEAKER_00: Could he possibly be the Christ?
SPEAKER_00: The woman who came hiding becomes a missionary.
SPEAKER_00: The woman whose life was disordered becomes an evangelizer.
SPEAKER_00: This is how grace works.
SPEAKER_00: Christ does not simply forgive you and leave you where you are.
SPEAKER_00: He transforms you.
SPEAKER_00: The place of your shame becomes the place of your witness.
SPEAKER_00: The well becomes a pulpit.
SPEAKER_00: The womb becomes a witness.
SPEAKER_00: The sinner becomes an apostle.
SPEAKER_00: That is why the church gives us this gospel during Lent.
SPEAKER_00: Because Lent is not about appearances or religious cosmetics.
SPEAKER_00: Lent is about letting Christ bring us to the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And we resist most times.
SPEAKER_00: We would rather talk about religion and then admit our thirst.
SPEAKER_00: We would rather debate worship than surrender our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We rather talk about what's wrong and what's going what's corrupt instead of giving in and allowing truth to penetrate.
SPEAKER_00: Even the Samaritan woman tries to change the subject by arguing about where people should worship.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus will not let the conversation stay abstract.
SPEAKER_00: He is, after all, after her heart.
SPEAKER_00: And he's after our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are still drawing water from wells that will never save us.
SPEAKER_00: Success, distraction, social media, pleasure, busyness, control.
SPEAKER_00: We keep going back to the same wells hoping that these things will ultimately satisfy us.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is where freedom begins.
SPEAKER_00: And this gospel gives us a glimpse not only of conversion but of Easter, a foreshadowing of what's to come.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman becomes like Mary Magdalene.
SPEAKER_00: She has encountered Christ and she cannot keep him to herself.
SPEAKER_00: What does she do?
SPEAKER_00: She runs out to tell others.
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole logic of evangelization.
SPEAKER_00: You do not become a witness because you know everything, you become a witness because you have met someone.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles left their nets, she left her water jug.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever Christ is truly encountered, something gets left behind.
SPEAKER_00: So the question this Sunday is not whether we have whether we admire this gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we recognize ourselves in this gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Where are you thirsty?
SPEAKER_00: What water jug are you still carrying around?
SPEAKER_00: Because until we're honest about our thirst, we will never understand what Jesus means by living water.
SPEAKER_00: This woman did not leave the well with all of her answers.
SPEAKER_00: She left us something greater.
SPEAKER_00: She left with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that was enough to change everything.
SPEAKER_00: So, my brothers and sisters, this Lent, let her story be your story.
SPEAKER_00: Come to the well, this well.
SPEAKER_00: Come with your thirst, come with your unfinished life, and let Christ meet you there.
SPEAKER_00: Because once you truly encounter him, you cannot simply go back to the same old, same old.
SPEAKER_00: And when he's touched that deepest thirst in your heart, then go and what and do what she did.
SPEAKER_00: Tell someone.
SPEAKER_00: Tell someone, come and see that I have found the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.