3rd Sunday of Lent, Cycle A (2026)

There are several things that we can relate to in this Gospel. First is that like this woman, we all are thirsting for something beyond our reach, something we believe we don't yet have, and as is often times the case, we don’t even know what it is that’s missing from our lives.

So often we seek to satisfy this thirst through things that money can buy. Other times, like the woman Jesus encountered, we hope that a relationship will solve the problem. What we inevitably find is that it doesn't satisfy our restlessness and that we continue to seek out the next thing, the next affirming person, or even sexual partner, hoping it satisfies. The search continues, while our hearts remain restless.

A second point is how this woman bore shame, believing that she was damaged goods. At a certain point in each of our lives, as we make bad decisions that we can't go back and change, we can begin to hear that voice within, telling us that we are damaged goods, that we are no longer what God had always hoped us to be.

Jesus, at last, gave her the message that she longed to hear, that she needed to hear: that she was a child of God and beloved. He told her that it's not that series of men in her life, nor any other that would follow that is ultimately going to satisfy: it's Jesus himself. As he would say to us: “Stop. Look to me. Nothing else will satisfy you, until you allow me to be what satisfies.”

As you likely know, we have brothers and sisters in our parishes, preparing to enter the Church at Easter. Some of whom will, like the Samaritan woman, encounter Jesus at the well, the Baptismal font. 

Like the Samaritan woman—these elect and candidates, entering the Church, but also us—we need humility and a willingness to surrender and admit our restless search and our failures, that we thirst for something more than the mere filler that proves to be only a distraction. Until we do, the ache and emptiness will remain. 

May we rediscover the graces that are given at Baptism. Deep within us, there’s a well where Jesus still resides. You need first to desire to find him within, and to ask for the courage to let him work in your life. As he said, “Everyone who drinks this (ordinary) 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."