Everyone thirsts! The human body is made up of approximately 60% water. This water is used in the process of living a human life and so it needs to be replenished. The human person needs to take in water – either H20 directly from the tap or nowadays in a bottle – or – in lesser amounts in other foods we eat that contain also water.
It is not uncommon then, from time to time for a person to say outloud: "I thirst! I am thirsty! I need something to drink!" It seems that 4-8 glasses of water a day is the recommended amount to keep the body well lubricated and fully functional!
Everyone thirsts! But there is another thirst that everyone has as well! It is a thirst to KNOW, and to LOVE and to SERVE God – who created the water in the first place, who created us in the second place and who knows exactly what we all need both in the material and spiritual dimensions of our lives!
Thank goodness He knows! Thank goodness He shares that knowledge! Thank goodness all it takes to become functional is our cooperation!
The type of cooperation that God desires is our free, voluntary and loving cooperation; our trusting and obedient cooperation; our responsive, faithful and grateful cooperation! Which is not the kind that was demonstrated by the Israelites in the first reading today: newly formed as God's people they mistrust him almost from the start! Moses has his hands full! And God reluctantly gives them water when they ask in a grumbling, argumentative, even hostile sort of way! If Moses was not God's friend, it might have turned out another way!
We can trust God to provide the water – both physical and spiritual – his own way – in his own time! It should never cross our minds: "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" God is always with us – to supply for all our needs – if we trust him – if we let him!
In the gospel passage Jesus has an encounter with the Samaritan woman to whom he reveals not only to her, but to the whole world that he himself is the source of the spiritual life giving water from God: the life giving water that would be effective by his self-sacrificial death on the Cross and subsequent Resurrection from the dead. He is the Life of the world. He tells her that if she drinks the water he can give her she will never be thirsty again - her spirit would be filled with grace and there would be nothing more to add! She misunderstands and thinks he is talking about water from Jacob's well. Jesus convinces her that his words are no ordinary words – that he is truly the Messiah – and that her spiritual parchment and yearning can be satisfied both now and forever: for the asking – from him!
She asks, he gives; she believes, he is content that at least this one woman is now on the right track! (Jesus has seemingly so few "victories" in his job as Savior).
Today, here and now, we rejoice that 5 of our own neighbors and friends have made the statement of the woman at the well!: "I thirst! I thirst for what the world cannot give me! I thirst for what only God can give me! I thirst for the spiritual waters that flow from the pierced side of Christ Crucified! I thirst to be a member of the Catholic Church!"
We are so happy to have them here. We are so happy to continue their process of Initiation into full communion with us by the ceremony of the First Scrutiny (special composition of prayers) that will open them most fully to what God will bestow on them on Easter Sunday! We are so happy that life-giving water still wells up from the Cross of Christ Crucified!
(Rite of Scrutiny)
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