Our Lord in His great Providence made possible a conversation with a woman from Samaria from which we learn very great lessons. Although He came to the children of Israel, He took advantage of their rejection to demonstrate that Faith and Obedience were indications of being true descendants of Abraham, not merely being born from him physically. Creating the opportunity, our Lord was able to be left alone to have a conversation with this Samaritan woman about the Gift of God of Living Water that is able to quench our Spiritual thirst. As the psalmist said, "My soul is athirst for God; yea, even for the Living God!" Only God is able to quench our soul's thirst because our soul is not made of the earth like our bodies are. We try to capture Life by pursuing all types of worldly pursuits, but are never able to, and are constantly hoping that one day we will find Life in an unexpected source.
The Samaritan woman asks our Lord, "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us this well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?" She was expressing the physical wonders of the well which was able to provide water for Jacob and his children and cattle, but our Lord desired to provide her with a spiritual lesson from God's great and marvelous creation. Just as how this well was able to quench the thirst of all of Jacob’s family, down to even his cattle, the Source and Maker of all creation is able to quench the Spiritual thirst of the man of God, down to his children, his thoughts, and his cattle, the powers of his soul that are not endowed with reason such as anger and desire. The water bringing physical refreshment, is symbolic of the spiritual waters of purification in Holy Baptism and in the hot tears of repentance that bring one over from a life of wickedness to one of blessedness.
"Jesus saith unto her: 'Go, call thy husband and come hither.' The woman answered and said: 'I have no husband.' Jesus said unto her: 'Thou hast well said: 'I have no husband', for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; in that saidest thou truly." How quick we are to judge this woman for being on her 6th partner, thinking to ourselves, “no matter how bad I may be, at least I haven’t been married and divorced 5 times and still living in sinful relationship”. Spiritually, all Christians are only to be wedded to one person and that is Christ. Are we able to confidently say that we have not had 5 husbands already? Can we surely say that the current partner we have is Christ and not someone else? We are addicted to this sensual world, and give over our 5 senses to it and find ourselves in the same state as the Samaritan woman. Having been let down with finding any lasting happiness in the 5 senses, we have divorced them, and have gone to live with our sixth partner, the successor of the 5 senses, Falsehood and Filth. We have become fornicators with Heresy, erring grievously in doctrine. But now that Christ has come and offered us Living Water, we have the choice of asking Him to stay with us as did the Samaritans, or we can be like the Nazarenes that sought to cast the Lord down from the hill to destruction for His words, or like the Gadarenes who begged Him to leave them and go away.
The Lord is asking this most important question of us: who is it that we are wedded to? We can answer that we are wedded to the world, sin, or the Devil, and be destroyed along with them. We will be drinking a water that will only make us thirstier the more we drink from it. Or we can acknowledge Christ the Lord as our lawful Husband, and espouse ourselves to Him with faith and love, and drink of His living water, from which we will not thirst and on which we will float into the heavenly Kingdom and Eternal Life.
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