The thirsty Samaritan woman

In reading the passage of the Samaritan woman, we are used to thinking that Jesus is thirsty, asking the woman for a drink, but a deeper reading of the text helps us to discover the true thirsty woman: a stranger, thirsty for love.

A woman who goes to the well to draw water in the hottest hour, perhaps because she doesn't want to meet anyone. At that same well sits Jesus tired. It is he, a Jew, who initiates the dialogue, a difficult dialogue to overcome the woman's reluctance and win her trust. "Give me a drink." The woman is amazed that a Jew speaks to her precisely, three times irregular: she is a woman, she is a Samaritan woman whom the Jews despised and her personal life is not exactly blameless because she had five husbands and now lives with another.

After the first bars, the tone deepens: Jesus reveals himself progressively, as he guides the woman on a profound inner journey, until she passes from the defensive to the amazement of discovering the exceptional Person who reads in her heart, a prophet, that is a man of God. He will be the one to resolve the Samaritan / Jewish diatribe on the right place to worship God. Jesus surprises her once again, to her question he does not answer directly, but declares: "God is Spirit". The Spirit is the force of love that raises the human being in the sphere in which an encounter with God is possible; in Jesus who is the Truth, the place that unites the Father and the Son in a dialogue of love and in him all believers. We can say that the Spirit is the third interlocutor of the dialogue. The whole episode of the Samaritan woman can be read as a parable of the progressive action of the Spirit that subverts the initial situation of every believer, without overlapping his choices and respecting cultural and psychological limits.

The dialogue ends with the self-revelation of Jesus as Messiah: "It is I who speak to you": with great solemnity because the "I am" evokes the name with which God revealed himself to Moses. Jesus revealed himself to a woman, a stranger and a sinner who followed him on the path of self-understanding, so much so that she courageously declared that she had no husband, now free from the worry of the judgment of those who condemned her for her lightness of life. She has chosen the truth of a life spent in search of love that ended in different stories that ended badly.

With the request to go and call her husband, Jesus did not want to make her uncomfortable but, alluding to something that he could not know in the normal way, he revealed himself as the one who reads in the secret of the heart her. He revealed himself to that woman, a sinner, but thirsty for the Truth. She satisfied in her thirst for Love and Truth, she runs to proclaim to everyone the wonders of the one she met. It's too good news that she can't keep to herself. She now she no longer cares about the judgment of the people who judge her, she is finally free.

She runs to announce the Messiah. She is transformed from a sinner into a missionary, sent to the people to reveal to them the truth of the God of Love.


Anna Maria Del Prete
NP June / July 2022