Jesus, the Spring of Living Water — Silvio José Báez, ocd

Dear brothers and sisters,

During the coming Sundays of Lent, we will hear three beautiful passages from the Gospel of John. Since ancient times, the Church has used these texts as a catechesis for those preparing to receive baptism at Easter—and as a help for all of us who are already baptized to renew our baptismal faith.

They are the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, which reveals him as the source of living water; the healing of the man born blind, which shows him as the light that heals our blindness; and the raising of Lazarus, which presents him as the life that conquers death.

So the three great Paschal symbols that will accompany us in the liturgy beginning today are water, light, and life.

Today, we heard the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman. Jesus arrives at a small village in Samaria. It’s midday. He’s tired from the journey and thirsty, so he sits down beside a well.

Just then, a Samaritan woman comes to draw water. She’s anonymous. Her life is fragile and complicated. She belongs to a people whose religious practices were far from the Lord and mixed with other beliefs.

This woman represents the people of Samaria—but also all humanity, each one of us. She’s like a bride who has gone after other loves, yet whom God now wants to win back and draw again with his love.

Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink” (Jn 4:7).

She’s surprised that a Jewish man would ask her for water, since Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with one another. But in those simple words—“Give me a drink”—something very profound is revealed. God is thirsty. Not thirsty for water, but thirsty to be welcomed and loved.

God thirsts for you and for me. He thirsts for humanity.

That’s why Jesus tells her: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10).

Notice that Jesus doesn’t argue with the woman. He doesn’t scold her or accuse her. Instead, he speaks to her about a gift—the “gift of God.”

A gift is something freely given. It isn’t earned or deserved.

That woman knows only effort and fatigue. Every day she has to come to the well and draw water. But Jesus offers her a different kind of water—one that doesn’t depend on human effort or on our own merits and virtues.

Jesus explains: “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. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13–14).

The woman becomes excited and asks for that water. And who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want a gift that could change life forever?

So many times we drink from different wells—success, possessions, pleasure, recognition—yet we remain thirsty. Jesus offers us something different: living water that springs up from within and fills our whole life.

In the Jewish tradition, the well symbolized the law of Moses with its commandments and norms. It was like water that nourished good works. In that sense, the well represented a religion centered on external observance of the law.

Jesus offers something deeper. He doesn’t speak about rituals or rules to fulfill. He speaks about an interior spring—a life within us that makes us free, joyful, and full.

The water Jesus offers is the love of God. It’s like a spring that flows endlessly within us, giving life, healing wounds, and helping life grow and mature. It’s a source that satisfies our deepest thirst for love and meaning. And it doesn’t stay closed within us—it overflows into the lives of others.

Even if our jar is cracked and our thirst isn’t completely satisfied yet, we can still become a source of living water for others—a fresh cup of water, or even just a drop of the life-giving love of God.

The living water of the Spirit also responds to the thirst of peoples for justice and peace. Oppressive regimes, unjust social systems, and corrupt forms of power can’t be overcome by human effort alone.

True social transformation begins with the transformation of the human heart. Without men and women who are free, converted, and purified from idols—people who are honest, capable of fraternity, and committed to justice—efforts to change society often end up repeating new forms of oppression.

It isn’t enough to change structures. God must renew our hearts.

The spring of living water is Jesus himself. He is God’s answer to our thirst. From the day of our baptism, his word and his Spirit have been alive within us, giving us a life that is strong, luminous, and free.

But over time, that spring can become buried. Sometimes it seems as if it has disappeared. The heavy stones of suffering, the fine sand of our fears, and the foul debris of our sins can slowly cover over the living water within us.

Lent is the time to clear away those obstacles—to free the heart so the water of Christ can flow again.

Recently, speaking to Spanish seminarians, Pope Leo used a striking image. He said:

“It is said that trees ‘die standing’: they remain upright, they retain their appearance, but inside they are already dry… Spiritual life does not bear fruit because of what is visible, but because of what is deeply rooted in God. When that root is neglected, everything ends up drying up inside, until, silently, it ends up ‘dying standing upright.’”

Something like that can happen to us, too. We can be very busy. We move from one activity to another. We carry out projects, we fulfill responsibilities—we even come to church.

But inside we may feel empty, restless, or sad—because we’ve lost living contact with the Lord.

When we neglect our interior life, when the living water of God’s love stops flowing within us, everything slowly dries up.

That’s why today’s Gospel invites us to return to the heart.

Let’s return to prayer.
Let’s listen again to the Word of God.
Let’s rediscover the grace of the sacraments.

Let’s return to the heart.

At one point, the Samaritan woman asks Jesus: “Where should we worship God? On this mountain, or in Jerusalem?”

Jesus’ answer is surprising. Worship is not limited to a place—not to a mountain or a temple. The true place of encounter with God is within.

You are the temple where God lives. In your heart, he has placed a spring of water that never stops flowing.

Let’s allow Jesus to quench our thirst with the living water of his love. Let’s not settle for “dying standing”—looking alive on the outside, but dry within.

Silvio José Báez, o.c.d.

Auxiliary Bishop of Managua
Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent, 8 March 2026

Translation from the Spanish text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Who Knows? [Sermon]

The story of the people of Israel moving from Egypt to the promised land is pretty well-known. After they reached the promised land, each tribe settled in a different area.

After King Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king and required high taxes and forced labor from the people. The ten northern tribes rebelled and formed the northern kingdom of Israel, under a new king Jeroboam. Judah and Benjamin remained as the southern kingdom of Judah.

Later, the Assyrians attacked and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and relocated most of the population. The Assyrians adopted the religion of the land and worshiped the god of the Israelites, and married and had children with the remaining people of Israel.

These are the Samaritans.

So to the people of Judah, or Judea, the Samaritans are the descendants of rebels and invaders.

They’re not well-regarded.

This is why Jesus uses a Samaritan as the person who cares for the man who was robbed and beaten in the parable we call The Good Samaritan.

And it’s why today’s story is about a Samaritan Woman.

Let’s go to God in prayer.

God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, to help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.

Amen.

Women did not have high status in Judah during the time of Jesus. To be fair, women did not have high status in much of the world during the time of Jesus. And there were rules for men and women to be separated , and not just in sports and bathrooms. So when Jesus was alone and speaking with a lone woman, this was not a good look.

Further, this woman was a Samaritan: a descendant of the rebellious northern tribes and the Assyrians who invaded them.

So it makes sense that the woman says

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

She’s a woman. She’s from a people that the Jews look down on.

She also says the well was from their ancestor Jacob. If you remember the stories from the Hebrew scriptures, Jacob was called Israel by God. This well was created before the captivity in Egypt, before Joseph was sold into slavery and ended up in Israel, before he invited his family to live in Egypt during the famine, before Moses led them out of Egypt and back to the Holy Land.

So the well was created by Jacob, or Israel, ancestor of both Samaritans and Jews, long before there were a separate Israel and Judah, and before Samaritans were even a people.

So one unusual part of the story is the interaction of Jesus with a Samaritan woman.

The other unusual part, and the part that often stands out to people, is Jesus’ knowledge of the woman’s life: He knows she had five husbands and was with someone who is not her husband.

How does Jesus know this?

The traditional reasoning is that Jesus is the Son of God and knows all things. That works for a lot of people. Others may look for a more earthly explanation. Maybe he had spoken to someone else about her. Maybe there was some sign in her clothing. Maybe Jesus was actually interested in someone that others would just look past.

The Samaritans asked Jesus to stay with them. He stayed two days, and many Samaritans came to believe.

Why does this story matter today?

We live in California. Until 1848, this was Mexico. That’s why there are so many towns with Spanish names.

The ideology of Manifest Destiny was that the United States should spread across the continent, and led to displacement of indigenous people and the Mexican-American War. This nation killed many people whose ancestors had lived here for thousands of years and drove the survivors onto reservations, and drove many of the Mexican people – themselves various mixes of indigenous, Spanish, and African heritage – south.

The United States – largely the white United States – saw these people as inferior.

Meanwhile, women could not vote, or own property, or in many cases even divorce an abusive husband.

And while we have made some real progress in the nearly two centuries since 1848, we are sliding back toward the idea that a lack of melanin in one’s skin somehow makes one superior to someone with a darker complexion, and that an SRY gene, usually – but not always – on the Y chromosome, makes someone a man, superior to women.

What disturbs me is how often these ideas are put forth by people who call themselves Christian. Followers of Jesus.

What Jesus are they following? Who knows? It’s not the Jesus who spoke with a woman who was a mix of people the Jews considered less-than.

Periodically I mention a cartoonist named David Hayward. He’s a former pastor and draws under the name “The Naked Pastor.”

He has a cartoon where Jesus is carrying a sheep back to the fold.

The other sheep say

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Hold it right there!

That sheep wasn’t lost.

We kicked that sheep out!

And Jesus says

I know.

And I found the sheep.

Repeatedly, Jesus is erasing the lines between people.

David Hayward has a cartoon about that, too.

And people, including people who claim to be following Jesus, keep drawing lines back in.

They don’t seek to know the people they’re keeping out. They don’t want to know their stories. They don’t want to know their struggles.

Most of all, I think they don’t want to know their humanity. Because once we see other people as people, it’s harder to demonize them and make them into scapegoats.

We’ve heard people called criminals and mentally ill. Sometimes people are called animals, or vermin. This is useful. If I can get you to focus on them as an enemy, you may not notice if I am doing something that harms you.

The people coming into our nation, fleeing persecution and poverty, are not the enemy.

The people who were here before our nation conquered the land are not the enemy.

The people whose lives are different from ours are not the enemy, even if we don’t understand their lives.

They are all people. Just as we are people. And if we took the time to get to know people, maybe we would see them as people. Even if she was a mixed-race woman who had five husbands and now is living with a man she is not married to.

Here’s a real challenge for this week:

I would like each of us to find someone we are at least a little uncomfortable with, and ask them about themselves.

Maybe we will ask “how is your life?” or “what would make your life better?” or just “how are you doing?”

Give people a chance to let us understand who they are. And maybe we will see them as more human.

Who knows?

Amen.

Let’s sing CH 351 Fill My Cup, Lord

* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue

* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.

Quote of the day, 8 March: St. Teresa of Avila

Well, here is what happens sometimes to a soul that experiences these anxious longings, tears, sighs, and great impulses… While this soul is going about in this manner, burning up within itself, a blow is felt from elsewhere (the soul doesn’t understand from where or how). The blow comes often through a sudden thought or word about death’s delay. Or the soul will feel pierced by a fiery arrow.

I saw a person in this condition [Teresa refers to herself]; truly, she thought she was dying, and this was not so surprising because certainly there is great danger of death. And thus, even though the experience lasts a short while, it leaves the body very disjointed, and during that time, the heartbeat is as slow as it would be if a person were about to render his soul to God. This is no exaggeration, for the natural heat fails, and the fire so burns the soul that with a little more intensity God would have fulfilled the soul’s desires.

You will tell me that this feeling is an imperfection and ask why the soul doesn’t conform to the will of God since it is so surrendered to Him. Until now, it could do this, and has spent its life doing so. As for now, the reasoning faculty is in such a condition that the soul is not the master of it, nor can the soul think of anything else than of why it is grieving, of how it is absent from its Good, and of why it should want to live. It feels a strange solitude because no creature in all the earth provides it company, nor do I believe would any heavenly creature, not being the One whom it loves; rather, everything torments it.

But the soul sees that it is like a person hanging, who cannot support himself on any earthly thing, nor can it ascend to heaven. On fire with this thirst, it cannot get to the water, and the thirst is not one that is endurable, but already at such a point that nothing will take it away. Nor does the soul desire that the thirst be taken away save by that water of which our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman.

Saint Teresa of Avila

The Interior Castle, VI.11.2, 4–5

Teresa of Avila, St 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Kavanaugh, K & Rodriguez, O (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: This detail of a photographic artwork created by Elías Rodríguez Picón comes to us thanks to the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Alba de Tormes. The artist’s sister is the model for this scene, which is intended to show the beginning moment of the Transverberation. You can see and read more about his photographic technique in this article from La Hornacina (in Spanish). Image credit: Discalced Carmelites (By permission).

8\ #BiblePeoplearejustlikeUs

We're all a little, like the #Samaritanwoman at the well ... a history of sin, misunderstood, rejected/shunned by others, experiencing times of loneliness - Jesus knows our "not so pretty" side & yet Befriends/Loves us in spite of it. As the Samaritan woman ... once repentant & forgiven, share your joy with others so they too can come to know Jesus as the living💦water that leads to life eternal.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ordhsDeAt60&si=hKL8XlJkIQ-fB7O_

#bible #JESUSIsLivingWater #everlastinglife