THIRSTING FOR THE ONE WHO THIRSTS FOR US
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” - John 4:13
I have found myself stumbling through Lent, not quite sure how to enter into it. I usually begin Lent thinking of what I need to give up, what I need to deprive myself of so that my life can be more desert-like. No need to go looking for the desert this year. We find ourselves in the harshness, loneliness, deprivation, temptation, and exhaustion of the desert without even trying. And so, this year for me has felt like a long Lent, an extended journey eliciting our deepest thirsts: for good health, justice, the essentials, healing, community, tender mercy, peace.
To this day, many of us desperately crave the Eucharist, still unable to physically gather as a community at Mass, thirsting for God in real tangible ways. God knows that. This is why we encounter Jesus journeying into the desert at the start of Lent, at the very beginning of his public ministry. It’s also why we see him in today’s gospel visiting the Samaritan woman at the well “at about noon,” the heat of the day, and “tired from his journey.” Jesus goes out into the desert and visits the well during a very hot time of day, not because he wants to deprive himself and suffer, but to find us. Jesus knows that to be with us means meeting us in our deserts, wherever we’re thirsting.
As we continue our Lenten journey, may we be filled with wonder at how God comes to us, like the Samaritan woman, in such ordinary ways and seemingly chance encounters. May we discover with her that someone else is at work in our lives, very close to us every day, offering us opportunities for new life, new meaning and new direction. May the God who seeks and thirsts for us open our eyes to the world around us which abounds with wells and opportunities for encounters with the Source of Life.
What are those wells in my life I go to in order to quench my spiritual thirst, to be refreshed and renewed? How does God come to me in the desert(s) of my life?
David Romero, SJ
Photo credit: Ascension Press