Third Sunday of Lent
“The water that I shall give will turn into a spring… welling up to eternal
 Husbands and wives often recount the story of how they first met. In the middle of the twentieth century, it was once estimated that seventy per cent of couples met at dance halls. Those were the days before online dating. Journeys away from home occasionally offered romantic possibilities too. A famous British film of the 1940s, Brief Encounter, tells of such a romance that begins with a meeting at a railway station; though as one of the couple is married already, it does not lead to a lasting relationship.
 In biblical times the romantic setting was more likely to be a well. There, farmers watering their animals might catch glimpses of local women. Isaac’s wife Rebecca and Moses’ wife Zipporah were first encountered by their future husbands at wells, and it was at a well that the patriarch Jacob met his wife-to-be. Weary from his journey, he rested in the midday heat, to see a beautiful shepherdess coming at this unexpected hour to water her flock. The encounter ended with a kiss, though Jacob had to wait years before finally making Rachel his bride.
 God is patient, too, and not interested in brief flirtations with us. God desires close and enduring relationships. The prophet Hosea described God’s continuing love for the chosen people, despite their unfaithfulness to the covenant, as like that of a husband still in love with his unfaithful wife, always trying to win her back.
 Although they worshipped the same God, and shared many of the same beliefs, Jews despised Samaritans, in large part because the Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim, rather than the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was the correct place to worship the Lord. Many Jews avoided travelling through Samaria. Jesus, however, felt impelled to go there. The verse just before our Gospel reading says, “he had to cross Samaria”. That intensity of desire to win back the people of Samaria reminded the Gospel writer, perhaps, of Jacob’s unquenchable love for Rachel. Jacob’s well was deep, as wells are in that region, and it was the hottest hour of the day. What a perfect setting for the story of God’s burning love for us and of our deep need for God.
One can imagine the travel-weary Jesus asking humbly for hospitality wherever he went, including on his journey through Samaria. No doubt he often encountered people at wells. Samaritans might be reluctant to talk to a Jew, but Jesus could quickly turn everyday chatter into heart-to-heart encounters. We hear echoes of such conversations in today’s Gospel. He started off by asking for a drink; soon Jesus was saying, in effect: “Come to know the living God. Let God’s Spirit become a source of life within you.”
The Samaritan woman in our story evidently had a colorful past, which Jesus was quick to recognise. The meeting with Jesus turned out to be no brief encounter, but a love that would never die. The woman at the well, who was probably looked down on by the other residents of her town because of her troubled marital history, would go on to take Jesus’ words of life and love to them. And as the Gospel writer tells us, “Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony.”
 The woman’s request of Jesus, “give me some of that water”, can be our prayer too. Many are still thirsting for an experience of God that makes them feel truly loved and known, like the Samaritan woman in her encounter with Jesus. It is easy to be seduced by worldly attractions. Just as the woman kept having to go back to the well, some people find the happiness the world promises illusory and short-lived. You don’t have to keep coming back for more, Jesus assures us. He offers us himself as the true source of life and joy. Drink of God’s Spirit, he says, and you will never be thirsty again.
 How refreshing a message this is for Lent. Perhaps we are weary of the penitential journey, or ashamed that we have not taken it seriously enough. Whatever our past story, God longs to win us back. This Mass is an invitation to enter into deeper communion. And if we are tired of encounters that are only ever brief ones, Jesus offers eternal union. He is waiting for each one of us at the well.