The Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel comes to Jacob's Well carrying a jug. It’s a small detail, almost incidental—until you notice what happens at the end: she leaves without it. The jug is the quiet “before and after” of this whole Gospel. She arrives with something in her hands; she leaves with something in her heart.

That jug tells a story. It’s practical, of course: she needs water for the day. But it also carries all the weight of her life—her thirst, her routines, her disappointments. She comes at noon, the hottest time, when no one else comes. Perhaps she is avoiding the looks, the whispers, the questions. She has learned how to manage life: get what you need, keep your head down, don’t hope for too much.

And then Jesus is there—waiting, not judging, not avoiding her, not making her earn the conversation. He simply says, “Give me a drink.” God asks her for help. God makes Himself vulnerable. God speaks first.

She is startled because she knows the rules: Jews and Samaritans don’t mix; respectable men don’t sit chatting with women at wells; holy people don’t draw near to complicated lives. But Jesus does. He doesn’t begin with her failures. He begins with her thirst.

“If you knew the gift of God…” That’s where the turning begins. He speaks of “living water”—not the kind you carry home in a jug, but the kind that changes the one who drinks it. And suddenly her thirst has a name. She has been thirsty for a long time—not just for water, but for love; for belonging; for being seen without being reduced to her past; for a life that holds together.

Jesus gently touches the ache she knows so well: “You have had five husbands…” He doesn’t say it to humiliate her, but to heal her. He is not exposing her; He is unmasking the false wells she has been drinking from. How many of us know that pattern? We go back again and again with our jug to places that cannot finally satisfy: approval, success, distraction, resentment, the constant need to be right, the hope that the next relationship, the next purchase, the next achievement will finally quiet the restlessness. And each time we come away thinking, “Surely this time it will be different,” and each time the thirst returns.

Jesus does not shame her for her thirst. He reveals its true destination. Your heart was made for God, and until you drink from Him you will keep walking back to Jacob’s well with a jug that never stays full.

Then something extraordinary happens. This woman—who came alone, who came at noon, who came to avoid people—becomes brave. The conversation shifts. She asks real questions. She dares to speak of worship, of the Messiah, of hope. And Jesus answers with the full revelation of Himself: “I who speak to you am He.” He reveals Himself as the Messiah not to the learned theologians in Jerusalem, not to the important people, but to her. Jesus places His name like a gift into her hands.

And now we understand why she leaves the jug behind, because she has found something more urgent than the water she came for. She forgets the old routine. She doesn’t need to cling to what she carried. When the living water starts flowing, the old containers suddenly seem too small.

She runs back to the town and becomes the first missionary to her own people: “Come and see…” The woman who used to avoid the crowd now gathers the crowd. The woman who carried shame now carries Good News, like Mary Magdalene running to the disciples after meeting the Risen Lord. The woman who came with a jug leaves with joy.

Lent invites us to bring our jug to Jesus. Let’s bring the places where we have tried and been disappointed. Let’s bring the habits that never quite satisfy, the thirst we keep disguising. Jesus knows it already. He is not repulsed by it. He is waiting beside our well. He wants to give us Himself—the only love that does not run out, the only water that becomes “a spring within,” the only mercy that makes us leave the old jug behind and run, light-footed, into a new life, free at last to love Love itself.

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On the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent in Year A (and in every year when there are candidates for Baptism in the Community) the three Johannine narratives of the Woman of Samaria, the Man Born Blind and Lazarus, are read, and coupled with a proper Preface. These prefaces form a concise and beautiful summary of the symbolism of each Gospel narrative.   

In today’s Preface, the narrative of the Man born Blind is revealed as a sign of the coming of the Light of Christ in the Incarnation and the mysteries of Christian Initiation (which used to be known also as ‘Illumination’) where the contrast between light, which is faith, and the darkness in which we once walked is paralleled by the redemptive imagery of Baptism.

Many communities will also want to remember ‘Mothering Sunday’ today. This seems to have had some link with the Entrance Antiphon of the Mass, and particularly with the Epistle in the Old Rite of Mass for this day from Galatians 4: ‘Jerusalem, the Mother of us all.’

For the General Intercessions:

That the Lord may open the eyes of all peoples

to the wonder of God’s coming, and God’s continuing work among us.

‘God of steadfast love,

you cradle us at birth,

embrace us at our life’s end

and welcome us into your eternal home.

Let such a tenderness move us

to love you in return

and draw others into the circle of your care.’

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The hymns below have been chosen from different sources:

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Rejoice the Lord is King (CFE619, L326)

Amazing grace (CFE40, L846, LHON131, TCH203)

Thou whose almighty Word (CFE738, L887, LHON689, TCH269)

The light of Christ (CFE703, L747, LHON657)

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‍ Key

CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone

L – Laudate

LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)

TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)