Ex 1:3-7
Rom 5:1-2.5-8
Jn 4:5-42
“Give me a drink”.
Jesus is wearied and thirsty. It is about noon and the day is hot.
He is sitting near the well with no one to give him water to drink.
A woman arrives. She, too, is thirsty. She needs water for herself and her household.
“Give me a drink”.
Jesus is thirsty, but He has other water to give.
The woman is thirsty, but she has other, deeper needs, too.
“Give me a drink”.
Desire is now speaking to desire. Divine desire to human desire.
Jesus is filled with a desire to give.
The woman is filled with a desire to receive.
Jesus has in Himself treasures of the water of life.
He possesses the fullness of grace and truth.
He has been sent into the world to announce the truth and to give the Spirit.
He is consumed with a burning desire to give to this woman – to give to us – the true knowledge of His Father and to communicate the Spirit of His Father.
The woman, too, has immense desires.
Her desire to love and to be loved has been frustrated by too many failed relationships.
At a deeper level, though, she acknowledges another desire: she wants to know and to practice the right worship of God.
Jesus has awoken a profound thirst for God in her heart.
When Jesus tells her that “The Father is seeking… true worshippers”
we begin to glimpse another’s desire. Within Jesus’ desire we see the Father’s desire.
God is seeking men and women who will enter into right relationship with Him. They will know Him and worship Him. They won’t be slaves performing an exterior ritual out of fear, but free worshippers able to open their hearts to Him in trust and love. The Father thirsts for loving hearts.
Jesus is the face of the Father’s desire. He is the Father’s thirst made visible and tangible. Jesus is the Messiah, anointed with the Spirit of Truth. He was sent precisely to reveal the Truth about His Father who wants to be recognised as our Father. He reveals the truth about God’s Heart and, at the same time, makes manifest the truth of our own heart.
“I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will tell us all things.” – “I who speak to you am he.”
For this woman, Jesus has no secret.
His thirst has met the thirst the Father and the Son are longing for.
He can be fully Himself with her and reveal to her the depths of His thirst.
This is the good news: the Messiah brings into the world the Gift of the Father, the Spirit of His Love.
When He gives the Spirit, He is restored. His thirst is quenched.
As we make our way to Easter, Jesus’ requests “Give me a drink” resonates in our hearts as a preparation for Jesus’ great cry on the Cross: “I thirst”.
Let us listen to these words in the silence of our hearts.
Would that we let Jesus’ thirst grow in us
and free in us an immense desire
for the gift of the Spirit of love and truth
for serving Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters
for the vision of the Face of the Father.