Scripture Reflection, March 8, 2026, Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 17:3-7 Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 John 4:5-42

Today's first reading begins,"In their thirst for water the people grumbled against Moses.“ The Samaritan woman in the gospel has come to the well alone in the heat of the day to draw water. In our own day, people all over the world are on the move to find water for themselves and their animals as climate change turns their home uninhabitable, without enough water.

The need for life-giving water is so elemental that when Jesus tells this Samaritan that he is able to give her living water, water that will end all thirst, she immediately answers, “Give me this water so that I may not be thirsty again.” Soon their discussion deepens. There is other emptiness she has attempted to address as evidenced by her five ”husbands.”

Gradually she realizes that this person with whom she is speaking offers more than an end to her thirst for water. “She went into the town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?’ “

There are all kinds of thirst. And the living water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman is the answer to all of them. Saint Augustine, who had some false starts of his own as he tried to heal his thirst, came to these wise words: "You have made us for yourself, Oh Lord. And our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

What was she thirsty for besides water, this Samaritan woman? What restlessness drives the need for money, power, praise we see around us? What kind of emptiness leads people to mistake artificial intelligence for real relationship? What kind of hurt seeks to be healed through the constant adulation of others? The thirst that Jesus responds to in the Samaritan woman, the universal restlessness that Saint Augustine identifies, find satisfaction only in God.

The Lenten practice of fasting may provide us with a helpful way to look at our own hungers and our attempts to address them.

by: Pat Schnee, OPA