In this reflection I will focus on the following passage from Sacred Scripture: John 4:5-41, analyzing it in the light of the Lord’s call. I hope that the Holy Spirit opens your hearts to help you find his will for your lives.

The Scripture narrates: Jesus tired from his journey, sat close to a well.

We can see in Jesus ’exhaustion that he undergoes a search for his own children. He did not just sit anywhere, but rather on the edge of the well. We can see by this action that the Lord waits until the adequate moment for our hearts to be open to hear his call. We could say he waits for the adequate moment to let us know his will for us so that he can then spring the question on us.

 

The Scripture continues: The Samaritan woman came to the well to get water. Meaning, the call is to a particular person, but at the same time it allows us to understand that from God’s perspective, the vocational call is open to all races, people and nations. It is offered to the young, giving them the responsibility of the answer.

 

The Lord tells her, “Give me to drink.” Every vocational proposal begins with a request. The immediate offer is not a request for an answer, but rather, it first of all attributes some responsibility to the person. Before all else it values something concretely that the person can do. By saying, ‘give me to drink,’ Jesus is telling our hearts, I have need of you, and of something that only you can give and do for me. ” That is why the call to a religious vocation is before all else a personal call. God asks you for something that he knows you can give. The Lord’s ‘give me to drink,’ establishes an important contact- to ask for something that the woman can give.

 

At the moment of the call, the religious vocation supersedes our actual selves, but it is also part of our conscience that we have the possibility that I can ‘give something of myself to the Lord.

 

The Samaritan woman tells him: “How can you, who are a Jew, ask me for something to drink?” Under the ‘give me to drink’ requested by Jesus, the Lord plants an interest in her. By asking, he lets her know that her person is not unknown to him; it does something unusual.  He uses words that are not common, he establishes ties that go beyond the criteria pertaining to ethnicity- of instinctive empathy, of religion or of cultural identity. It is something that stirs the heart and seems strange, original, like an un-thought of perspective that opens the desire to discover its totality. But it is something that is already working in the heart- a mysterious attraction to what Jesus wants from us. 

 

Jesus responds: “If you knew the gift of God…” It is as if he were saying: If you would simply begin to open your life beyond the minor mundane preoccupations and fears of your daily life, and throw yourself in the direction of something that is above and that is made for you (since it is your identity and happiness)- how your life would change, how the horizons of your life would extend….

 

Jesus tells you: If you knew the gift of God, the gift of God that he desires to give you…open yourself to discover the call that I am asking of you, do not be afraid.

 

And who is it that says, “Give me to drink…”

Jesus attracts to himself the woman’s attention. Making her conscious that it is He- God himself, who tells her ‘give me to drink.’ It is Jesus who invites her to establish a closer bond, to dialogue, to enter into a love relationship. We should note that the only one who calls is God, and that the vocation or the call is a continuous dialogue, above all, with God. He is the one who calls and reveals to our heart his will.

 

But Jesus says: “If you knew who it is saying to you, ‘Give me to drink,’ you would have asked him” A very important thing to note and be clear in our hearts is that the one who elects and calls is God, and we respond only to him. We need to be conscious that that is our responsibility.

 

God calling you- “If you knew who it is saying to you, ‘Give me to drink,’

I have need of you; I desire from you something that only you can give me, that only you can do…

 

If we had this certainty, Jesus says, it would be we who would be asking him. This is our being conscious of who is calling us, we would ourselves be asking for the grace to give a generous response, and from us would come “Yes Lord, I desire to satiate your thirst with my surrendering to you, with my life.” That is why prayer is so important.  After we recognize that the Lord is calling us we should ask him for the grace to correspond. And only by prayer- dialogue with God- will we be able to respond. If we do not have the grace for a generous response let us ask him who calls us.

 

The woman says to him, “Sir, you have no bucket to withdraw the water, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you perhaps greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us the well, from which he drank with his sons and his flocks?” In these verses the Lord reveals to us what is in the heart of each person who feels the call. There is fear and so we look for ways to evade God’s election for us. And it is normal for this to happen, what is not normal is for us to allow ourselves to be overcome by this fear, unable to respond to the Lord.

 

Let us analyze the, ‘You have no bucket to withdraw the water.” Here I feel we can see ourselves. Before the call of God we can hardly believe the immensity of the divine desire over us.  The soul can hardly take seriously God’s offer; it cannot risk so much. Because for us it is easier to believe in what we can touch, see, or in what we are “sure we can do.” So we try to defend ourselves by negating God’s call, “You have nothing to withdraw with.’ I am not capable, it’s not for me….  We try to negate the possible superior-transcendent-sense of what we just heard, “If you knew who it is saying to you, ‘Give me to drink,’ you would have asked him.”

 

The Samaritan woman says, “The well is deep.”

Let us see in the well, Christ’s heart. Even with our doubts and interior fears, we can recognize that the well is deep and we consider ourselves small before such great infinity. We know it to be profound like no other… and where would we find the searched- for- water that is “living water:’ fresh, pure and in which we can recognize our true identity, our future?

 

“Where do you get that living water, tell me from where?” An interest has been sparked.  The search to look further on has begun- though still weak and presently overwhelmed by doubt.

 

“Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us the well, from where he and his sons and his flocks drank from?” This is like saying: “all have always enjoyed themselves with this water and have not gone out in search of another.  So why do you have to come to complicate my life, force me to choose something that makes me strange in the eyes of my friends? Let me live my normal life like everyone else does- please!” The mystery perturbs, disconcerts, but Jesus doesn’t give up and he tells us: Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty...” With this affirmation Jesus expresses a double intention. He insists in making it clear to us that what he offers us is on another plane, situated above. He is asking us to respond to something superior.  And at the same time, he wants to make us understand that it is profoundly satisfying, it is definitive satiety, whole and perennial….

 

That is why ‘the water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” This is another crucial point in the call to a religious vocation. The religious vocation doesn’t just influence us, that is, it doesn’t belong to us.  But rather: it is for all, it is for others, it is a fountain of life, it is responsibility, it is self-forgetfulness, and service for others. It’s a style of life that aspires to be gift of “self” for others.

 

“Sir,” says the woman, “Give me this water.” Here we can see how this dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman reaches what God desires of the woman.  What at first was a simple call becomes a supplication, a search for God’s designs. And this is what God expects of us- that we look for his will in our lives, that we beg him so that we can give a response worthy of the call he makes.  And that we would say, “Lord give me this water.”

 

This mystery that is within the heart of the young woman is then placed under discernment; light is shed over her life and her past, “Go and call your husband…” That is, open yourself to find within yourself what I have been weaving in the story of your life for this encounter…everything you have lived. And then come back here…

After seeing all God has done for you, after seeing all your falls, your good actions, after arranging the jigsaw puzzle of your life and you can see it all in light of all that he has done for you, and when you yourself can see in the story of your life- God’s election toward you… Jesus says…. Afterwards come back here…

 

Go and call your husband. Jesus invites her to enter, to introduce himself within her so as to re-read the mystery of her life, to discern and meditate on her life.

 

The woman responds: “I have no husband.” We see how Jesus is able to reach his primary objective and that is, that she herself will search within and is able to understand herself. He already enters into an interior dialogue with her, regarding what she has done- I have no husband- Admitting that all that she has lived till now has not satisfied her, has not fulfilled nor enriched her. The water she has abundantly drank up till’ now has not satisfied her life. And that is why she is empty and in search. It is so important that our hearts admit the interior emptiness we have, not to frustrate us or depress us, but so that it moves us to discern where will our lives truly be satisfied.

 

Jesus responds: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.” He is revealing to her how far she is from finding her true identity and at the same time driving her to discover her genuine identity. Today Jesus makes the same affirmation to you in order to help you discover the truth of his plan with you. One of the goals of this retreat is (through grace) to help you discover the plan of God for your life. Look within and do not be afraid to discover this beautiful call of the Lord on your life… hidden in the depths of your hearts. And once it’s discovered, do not let it escape.

 

If you recognize the call of the Lord and you feel too weak to respond, beg from the Lord- ‘Give me of this Water! May it spring from me a fountain that will bring others to eternal life.’

 

Jesus tells her, “It is true because you have had five husbands.” By this he is showing us that in our lives we have had an abundant series of things that have not fulfilled us, We have also done a series of things that even after we have done them we also still do not feel fulfilled; instead we feel empty, it does not fill our lives. This tells us that the water from which you have abundantly drunk has not satiated your thirst. We see represented in the five husbands all our past actions, our yearnings and desires that have never been satisfied by the waters from this well. Perhaps up to now we have lived with an apparent fulfillment, but Jesus desires to give us something more, he is calling us to something more.

 

‘And the man you have now is not your husband’ That is to say, what you are doing now is not what will fill you.

 

‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet’ The woman recognizes the Wisdom of God, but still she tests him by asking, Where should we adore God in reality, where does God live, and where should we worship him? She is far from recognizing that God can be found in the personal history of each person. And so she is looking for an answer like, ‘where…?’

 

Jesus responds, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… God is Spirit, and those who adore him need to be guided by the Spirit so that he can be worshiped as he must. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. My sisters, the truth is the problem is not the particular physical place, maybe not even the one we know or like, or that we spontaneously go to, but rather, it is the interior of each person, and their truth …and the discovery of one’s own truth, of what each one is called to be. That is, many times we look in wrong places. The call of God is revealed in each moment of our past.  That is why Jesus tells her, “the time is coming soon… The Holy Spirit is the one who will reveal the grace and the gift. He is the one who will guide and illumine our way.

 

The woman continues to tell Jesus that a Messiah is coming and when he comes he will announce everything. She recognizes that this announcement comes only from God, that this truth will be revealed to her heart only by God. St. Augustine says that she knew that this would be done by the Master, but she still does not understand that the one who was talking to her was the Messiah. It is He who tells her ‘give me to drink.’ Many times on our vocational journeys we hear this call of God and we do not recognize it because we seek the Lord to personally reveal it to us; and that’s how it works, but he uses means, specific things that take place in our lives. Jesus responds, I am He who is speaking to you through various actions…. This phrase is the key interpretative phrase for the vicissitudes and doubts of this woman.

 

The woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She abandons the empty water jar, that is, her previous poor and empty-of-truth- life. She leaves behind her old ways and goes into the city to announce to others what has happened to her. Come and see a man who has told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?!’ That is, he has revealed me to myself, he has allowed me to discover the meaning of my past, he has opened my life to a new future, he has told me the truth….

 

Many people who lived in that Samaritan city believed in Jesus because of what the woman had told them… The people said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’ The experience is contagious. The apostle generates new apostles, because when we discover our personal truth and the mystery of the truth, it is impossible to keep it to ourselves.

 

 

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