Someone, I was told, at the sight of a very beautiful woman, felt impelled to glorify the Creator. The sight of her increased his love for God to the point of tears. Anyone who entertains such feelings in such circumstances is already risen…before the general resurrection.
JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 15th Step
THE ABANDONED JUG
8 March 2026
(Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2,5-8; Jn 4:5-42)
The wonderful encounter on this Third Sunday of Lent between the Lord Jesus and the Samaritan woman is surely one of the towering masterpieces of biblical narrative. In the most palpable way possible, it represents nothing less than the face-to-face encounter between the Incarnate Word and sinful humanity, so desperately in need of salvation. Jesus of Nazareth, who walks on the land of Israel with his feet of flesh and bone received from his blessed Mother, and who is himself thirsty and hungry after trudging all these miles from Jerusalem to Sychar—this same Jesus is the eternal Logos in whom and for whom everything was created in the beginning. And this remarkable woman of Samaria embodies the whole of humanity, the men and women of every historical moment and every geographical location. The passionate dialogue that follows between Jesus and the woman impacts us as a summary of the entire history of salvation. Each of us this morning should make the effort of imagination and will of becoming this Samaritan woman so that we, too, can encounter our Lord in the intimacy of our souls, and be saved by the encounter.
Let’s not forget, in the first place, that God’s grace always precedes all our own feelings, thoughts and actions. God’s grace always comes to us, mysteriously, ahead of anything else, while we are still sinners, even before we become aware of our sinful condition and begin to desire forgiveness. This is the central theme that runs through all three readings today. On a certain blessed midday, a poor solitary woman went to Jacob’s well just outside the hamlet of Sychar in Samaria, to draw water; she went at that sun-scorched moment of the day to avoid the glances of others, who scorned her as a great public sinner. At that moment combining stress, shame and exhaustion, she could not have known that at that very same time, in total synchrony with her, the Son of God had already mapped out for himself a route through Samaria, with the intention of making his journey as the weary Savior of the world converge with the journey of the woman, who was so weary from both her sin and her ostracism.
The Samaritan thought she was alone, isolated, abandoned; but that was not, in fact, true. All the while Jesus was already seeking her and loving her, without her knowing it! Her climax of disgrace and drudgery became a kairós of salvation with Jesus’ arrival on the scene. At the well, Jesus breaks into her awful solitude, so that it is two weary people who meet and gradually come to recognize each other through a dialogue of mutual attraction. From all eternity, the divine Word had already been making his way toward this woman, to take her as his mystical bride, as a figure of the Church and of each one of us!
In the Book of Exodus, we see that the people are dying of thirst in the desert, and they mutter against Moses and, through him, against God himself. The Israelites do what is strictly forbidden by the first commandment: they protest against God’s plan and test the Lord. Two weeks ago in the desert, the devil tried to seduce Jesus with the same temptation. Moses cries out today to the Lord because he does not see a way out of the situation. But God carries on with his plan of salvation against all human opposition. He shows his mercy by responding favorably to the murmuring of his people, even though it was a great sin. How can the God of compassion not be magnanimous in the face of people dying of thirst? God answers them by bringing water out of the hardest and driest rock. This detail from Exodus then becomes the main theme of the story of salvation in the Gospel, the theme that contains everything else: namely, that God always brings the water of his life out of the hard rock of our hearts.
In the second reading, from Romans, St Paul takes up the same theme in different language when he states that God has given us his grace without us deserving it in any way. Christ died for us not because we were “good” or “righteous”. Beyond all our understanding, Christ died for us while we were still sinners, rebels against God. Who would ever conceive of dying for an enemy? Only God! Already at that moment, he called us his “friends”, for whom he wanted to die in order to show us his love. We must believe what is truly incredible: that God imagined us as his friends when we were still his enemies! And yet we become his friends only by virtue of his Son’s death, when God’s love was poured into our hearts from Jesus’ pierced side, when he breathed his last on the cross and, by breathing his last, breathed his Holy Spirit into us.
These first two readings prepare us for Jesus’ extraordinary conversation with the woman at the well. It is the longest, most detailed and most profound dialogue Jesus has with anyone in all four Gospels. And it is not a parable: it is a lived historical narrative. In the course of this riveting dialogue, Jesus does three great things for the woman. First of all, he requests of the woman that she give him a drink. What a paradox! The Incarnate Word feels tired from walking so far in our flesh, and so he asks a fellow human being for help! He does not come to us as a triumphant king riding on a white stallion. Divine omnipotence, because it is all love, approaches us in the form of weakness: here the mystery of the cross already glimmers. When Jesus then says to the woman, Give me a drink, this burning thirst on the part of the Word anticipates the cry of Jesus crucified: I thirst. Yes, Jesus is always thirsty for our faith, for our love. Jacob’s well emerges here as a prefiguration of the Lord’s pierced side, from which blood and water will flow on Good Friday. In Jesus, God gives himself to us as a suffering man. Eternal life, which is his property, comes to us in him hidden deep within his human weakness. Of course, at this point the sinful woman does not understand this gift to her of Jesus’ weakness, but neither does she refuse his request.
The second great grace Jesus gives the woman is his offer of living water to her, that is, the heavenly gift of eternal life, in ironical exchange for her gift to him of earthly water. The sinner understands this offer least of all! Only the third grace begins to penetrate her heart: it is the confession of sin that Jesus grants the woman from the depths of his own know-ledge of her. Only now is she ready to accept the word of the One she herself proclaims to be a “prophet”. At this stage of the dialogue, the theme becomes the worship of God. After the initial two steps, and still guided by Jesus’ word, the woman now catapults from the depths of sin to the heights of contemplation in her desire to worship in Spirit and Truth. She can now finally welcome Jesus into her heart as he reveals himself to her as the Messiah, the Christ of God.
At the conclusion of the drama, the water of grace has penetrated to the depths of the sinful soul, has purified her, and has suddenly stimulated her to engage, surprisingly, in a truly apostolic action among her townspeople. Being now full of Christ’s grace, she casually abandons the jug of her original intention at the well’s edge, since she no longer needs to draw material water by her own effort. The abundant apostolic fruit of proclaiming the Gospel springs spontaneously out of the woman and demonstrates the authenticity of her conversion. Above all else, she now burns to share with the whole world the liberation she has received from Jesus. The woman instantly accepts Jesus’ accusation regarding her five so-called “husbands”; but her acceptance of the accusation and her repentance are almost a minor detail compared to the action of grace, which God has been pouring into her since the beginning of her existence. The grace of God given by Jesus, the grace of God that is Jesus, is the true protagonist of the story, and not the woman. Amazingly transformed from repentant sinner into ardent apostle in the course of one poignant conversation, she now hurries to her fellow citizens to announce the Gospel to them. She wants them, too, to believe and know the joy of salvation given to her by Jesus.
Today, my brothers and sisters, the sacramental mystery of the Sacred Liturgy transforms Whitethorn into Sychar. Our little chapel here, lost in the backwoods of the Lost Coast, becomes the site of our Jacob’s well. We, make no mistake about it, are today that Samaritan woman. Today the long-suffering and weary Jesus has come to seek out and find us in our own weariness and despair, so that we might drink from the abundant water of eternal life from his pierced Heart—the water of his love and compassion, poured into our hearts along with his Body and Blood at this Eucharist. Let us rejoice and be glad!
The whole progress of the world points to there being a creator whose purpose is to bring about, by means of his creative powers, a free response from his creatures below, so that they may move toward him and finally be united with him in a marriage of love.
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR The Moment of Christian Witness, 76
Two men who wanted to see the sunrise would be very foolish to argue about the place where it will appear and their means of looking at it, then to let their argument degenerate into a quarrel, from that to come to blows and in the heat of the conflict to gouge out each other's eyes. There would no longer be any question then of contemplating the dawn…
Let us who wish to contemplate God purify our hearts by faith and heal them by means of peace; for the effort we make to love one another is already a gift from him to whom we raise our eyes.
ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Sermons 23,18
Purify yourself and you will see heaven in yourself. In yourself you will see angels and their brightness, and you will see their Master with them and in them… The spiritual homeland of the person whose soul has been purified is within. The sun that shines there is the light of the Trinity. The air breathed by the entering thoughts is the Holy Spirit the Comforter.
ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 24
And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.
Last week, as we began to undertake our Lenten discipline the Church presented us with the mystery of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Although, as God, he is without sin and unable to sin, he still humbled himself to undergo baptism, purification by fasting, and battled with the temptations of Satan in the desert.
This Sunday, we have the mystery of the Transfiguration. On one level, the Church places the Gospel of the Transfiguration here in the opening weeks of Lent to give us encouragement and consolation. Our process of purification and participation in the Cross is to be seen in the light of the victory of Christ in the Resurrection. At a deeper level, because the Transfiguration belongs to the pedagogy of Christ himself, who uses the transfiguration to instruct his disciples about the nature of God and therefore their own and their discipleship.
In all three synoptic Gospels, the transfiguration is placed after Peter’s confession of faith, and Jesus’ first passion prediction.
Jesus is moving toward his Passion. He knows this but the disciples do not. He needs to bring them into a deeper understanding of himself and his mission if they are to follow him as he needs them to.
In his confession of faith, Peter has shown he is on the right path, he has opened himself enough to the light of Christ that he is able to witness before the Lord and the other disciples, with great confidence and conviction, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He has attained a certain level of faith.
But when Jesus follows Peter’s confession with his first passion prediction, Peter responds with a rebuke: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
Jesus makes it quite clear that Peter has badly misunderstood him and the nature of his mission. He responds to Peter with a rebuke of his own, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me you are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.
It is not enough for the disciples to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ they must also align themselves with his mission. The two must line up. There is no other way. Peter’s standpoint is an obstacle, a stumbling block, he is blocking Jesus view of his Father, whose will, desire and plan is always before the eyes of Jesus; guiding him in every step.
Thinking of Peter here, I was reminded of the third century bishop, Clement of Alexanderia’s distinction between the Pistic and the Gnostic Christian. The “pistic” is one who lives by “pistis”, which, in Greek, means ‘faith’. For Clement, the ‘pistic’ signifies the ordinary faithful believer, one who trusts in God, accepts the tenets of revelation and the apostolic teaching as given, and is obedient to Christ. This person practices virtue, worships regularly, and lives a moral life in a straightforward way. Clement does not intend this term to be pejorative. He insists that the way of the pistic is good, holy, and salvific, but it is not yet a mature faith. In Peter’s case, although his life has been turned upside down by his encounter with Christ, has left all things to follow him, and has come so far as to make this bold confession of faith, his understanding remains very limited. Jesus has more in mind for Peter. In comparison with where Jesus needs Peter to be if he is to fulfill his role as Jesus has laid it out for him, his faith remains immature. Jesus needs him to become what Clement calls the ‘true gnostic’ (from gnosis, meaning knowledge), as opposed to the heretical Gnostics he was battling against as bishop.
Clement describes the true Gnostic as “a mature Christian whose faith has blossomed into deep, contemplative understanding. One who has undergone intellectual, moral, and spiritual purification. Someone who reads Scripture with spiritual insight, who is capable of discerning its symbolic and mystical depths.
For Clement, The life of the true Gnostic is marked by perfect charity, (that is, love, for Clement, is the highest knowledge), and has achieved ‘apatheia’, that is freedom from disordered passions. Clement was perhaps the first to apply “apatheia” to the spiritual life. The true gnostic, in other words, is the pistic whose faith has reached its full flowering.
Jesus wants to see this kind of growth in Peter.
Jesus follows his passion prediction with a teaching about the conditions for discipleship: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
On the mountain Jesus’ primary intention is to show the disciples the truth of who he is: in his radiant splendor with all the theophanic signs that accompany him in the vision: the mountain, the shining face and garments, the present of Moses and Elijah, and the voice from the cloud - all point to his equality with God and his role as the one who is to come.
What’s more, the saying of the voice from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”, refers to the prophecy of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42:1, as does the almost exact saying of the voice that came from heaven at the Jesus’ baptism. In chapter 12, Matthew provides the whole quote: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight; I shall place my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not contend or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope” (Mt 12:18-21).
Peter will become the true Gnostic when he is able to see the splendor of the transfigured Lord manifest in the servant of the Lord. He will be able to set up his tent and abide in the rapt ecstatic movement of being caught up in God that he knew on the mount when his heart abides in the Lord who has set up his tent among us, who has come among us in free self-emptying love, who has willingly taken upon himself all our sins, sorrows, trials and difficulties, in a simple, lowly, hidden life, and when he follows the Lord by conforming his own disposition and behavior to his. Passages in the Scriptures that had seemed obscure will light up and unveil their meaning for him. And although his journey will not be without its humiliations and failings, in the end he will follow his Lord to the Cross.
Let us, too, put on the mind of Christ as we continue our Eucharistic celebration.
We need to exercise our ourselves greatly, to lay upon ourselves many hidden labors after a life of negligence, in order that our spirit which resembles a greedy and irritable dog may obtain purity and vigilance through simplicity, gentleness and fervor. However, be of good heart. If the passions lord it over us and we are weak, let us with great confidence offer to Christ our spiritual weakness and our impotence; let us confess them before him. He will help us irrespective of what we deserve, on the sole condition that we descend continually to the bottom, into the abyss of humility.
JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 1st Step