Robert Barron - The Thirsty Soul
Peace be with you. Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, we're again getting back to spiritual basics, and reading one and reading three both focus on this symbol of water. Now, I've talked to you before about water in the Bible as a negative symbol. Think of that "tohu wabohu," the watery chaos at the beginning of creation. Think of the waters of the flood, the waters of the Red Sea. Water can be a symbol of destruction. But it's also in the Bible a symbol of life. And think, these are desert people that wrote these texts, and so finding water. I think of, in a much more minor key, when I was out in California there was so much drought and when the rain would come, it was like this wonderful revelation.
So for biblical people, water is a symbol of life, and then press it, not just physical life but of the divine life of grace. And that's how we should read, I think, both the reading from the book of Exodus and the famous passage that's our Gospel for today. So first, look at Exodus. So the people have been led by Moses out into the desert. They're on their way to the Promised Land, but things aren't going well because this thing is taking a long time. Hello? I mean, anyone in a spiritual order knows about this. The journey toward God, the journey toward redemption, is always a painful one because it means letting go of sin. It means letting go of the old way of life.
In terms of the Bible, it's their life in Egypt as slaves. See, all of us sinners are slaves to our passions and slaves to worldly goods that we've made ultimate and all of that. And so the journey is a desert journey, necessarily painful. So listen: "In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?'" This is so familiar, isn't it, fellow sinners? So we know Egypt's bad. I shouldn't be a spiritual slave. I should be on my way to redemption. But when I'm in the middle of that journey, it's just painful.
Think of it as someone going on a diet or someone trying to change a lifestyle, whatever it is. When you're embarked upon the journey, you almost inevitably find it painful and difficult. And so you want to go back to the way it was. I know we were slaves, but heck, at least we had enough to eat. At least we had water to drink. We weren't dying out here in the desert. Well, that's the way all of us feel as we're on the spiritual journey. And I think now we're kind of in the middle of Lent, we might feel that way. When will this be over? When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage? And so like the people, we grumble. We grumble.
Now, God gives them water. So Moses famously strikes the rock and the water gushes forth. God wants his people alive, as I've said a thousand times. God wants us to partake of his grace. Because see, what's the problem? Grace, "gratia". It means gift. What's the one thing you can't do with grace? You can't grab it. You can't take it and make it your own. Because in that very move, it stops being grace and becomes something like a possession. Therefore, the grumbling and the grasping and "give it to me now", that attitude is repugnant to the very nature of grace. God gives them life.
That's what he wants. But the problem is the people were, in their negativity and their grumbling, demanding and grasping. Think here of the prodigal son. "Father, give me my share coming to me". You remember? Well, the father eventually tells him, look, everything I've got is yours. I want you to have all this. But what you can't do is grasp at it. "Give me my share of the inheritance coming to me so I can make it my little possession". Then it stops being grace. Everybody, it's a central paradox of the spiritual life. We stumble on it again and again. We want the divine life, but you can only receive the divine life as a gift. You can't grasp at it.
Okay, with that spiritual lesson in mind, we turn to this magnificent and endlessly informative story of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John. And once again, the imagery of water is being used. Water for thirsty bodies that symbolize the water of grace for thirsty souls. Listen now, John's a theological master of course but also a literary master, which means everything matters in the way he tells the story. So Jesus comes to the Samaritan town and, "tired from his journey, [he] sat down there at the well. It was about noon".
Augustine's magnificent commentary: he's tired from his journey into our humanity. It's a reference to the Incarnation. Jesus has willingly entered into all the limitation of sinful humanity, without becoming himself a sinner, of course. But he enters into our weakness. And where does he sit down? By a well. A well, the place where water comes. But we're going to see now in the course of the story, this is the way we tend errantly to seek the water of the divine life. Okay, Jesus sits right there. He comes right to the place where we sinners tend to come. And then the lovely detail, "it was about noon".
Another great motif in the Gospel of John is darkness and light. Remember? Jesus is the light of the world and the darkness will not overcome it. When Judas betrays him, he leaves the room and John says, "It was night. It was the hour of darkness". Well, what's this? Noon, high noon. That's the brightest time of the day. The sun's directly overhead. The light, in other words, is really shining in this story. We're meant to see something of extraordinary importance and clarity. So listen: "A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.'"
Now this can seem a little odd, a little cheeky even. Why is he asking her for a drink? What's our basic problem? Go right back to the waters of Meribah. Grasping. I want it. It's mine. I need it. I want to make it my possession. What's the opening move of the Lord Jesus? Now, fellow sinners, think about this now. In our grasping, we're trying to be happy and so we hang on to things. What's the Lord's first move? "Give me a drink". In other words, reverse the momentum. Move from grasping to giving. Now you see what's happening here. Grace, which is symbolized by the water, both in the first reading and here. Grace, gratia, gift. How do you get it? Not by grasping, but only by giving.
What you receive as a gift, give as a gift, and you'll get more of the gift. That's the principle. I don't know a more important principle in the spiritual order. So let me say it again: grace is a gift. Therefore, when we receive that gift, we should give it as a gift, and then we get more of the gift. Now you want to see that principle beautifully articulated? Jesus says, "Everyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life".
Spend the rest of Lent meditating on that passage. The rest of Lent. Spend the rest of your life meditating on that passage. Those who come to the well, that's all of us sinners. What's the well symbolizing here? It's all the ways we seek joy and life and happiness. And we do it, I've said a million times, through wealth and power and pleasure and honor and everything else. And we come to those wells and we grasp and we drink. But then we get thirsty again. Yes, of course we do. We have to, because that's not grace. That's turning the water, so to speak, into our possession. I have it. It's mine.
"Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst". Now why? Why? Because the water Jesus is giving is the water of the divine grace. And that never runs out, provided that as we receive it, we give it. And then we get more of it. When we get more of it, give that away. And then you get more of it, give that away. And you find yourself, now listen, "a spring of water welling up to eternal life". The central tragedy, everybody, of our sinful lives is we think we'll be happy by grabbing and filling ourselves up with whatever. Going to this well and that well, this well, that well, drinking, taking. But that doesn't satisfy us. On the contrary. Rather, the water I will give, Jesus says, that's the water of grace, becomes in you water that wells up to eternal life, and you'll never be thirsty again.
Contrive a way to make the whole of your life a gift. You'll be happy. Find the way to give away what you've been given. You'll be happy. The secret to unhappiness is to come back again and again and again to these wells and to drink and to take. There's the Israelites at the waters of Meribah. "Give me, I'm thirsty. Give me, give me". Well, you won't receive grace that way. But you want the water bubbling up to eternal life? Give the grace you've been given. Notice in this story, there's so much detail we could go into, but I love at the end when the woman comes to acknowledge who Jesus is and the truth he's telling her. It says, "She set the bucket down". Think of this woman now, day after day, carrying the bucket to this well and then filling it up with water, and how heavy that is. You ever carry water in a bucket? How heavy it is under the weight of this sinful, addictive pattern.
Once she understands the truth that Jesus is offering, she can set that bucket down. She doesn't have to go to these wells again and again. She's found the source of eternal life. You too can set down the weight of your addiction. And I don't know what it is. You know what it is. You know the well you've been going to again and again and again to be happy and it's never worked. Put it down. Put it down. Stop grasping and make of your life a gift. And then of course, beautifully, at the very end of the story, having set down the bucket, she goes into town, announces, "I found this man. He's told me everything I've ever done".
Well not literally, but in a way, yes, because he's uncovered the sinful pattern by which she's lived her whole life. He has told her everything she's ever done, this endless journey for happiness by going to these wells. And she comes into the town as an evangelist, offering a word of liberation: "Hey, you can have the same thing that I found". My favorite definition of evangelization, one starving person telling another starving person where to find bread. That's what she is; this endlessly thirsty person who's telling other thirsty people how you can satisfy your thirst. Stop trying to fill your life up. Stop grasping and grabbing. Give what you've been given. And God bless you.