Our deepest desires

 Exodus 17:3-7 Give us water to drink

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42 ‘A spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

 

‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’. (Romans 5.5)

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God’s love, like water, flows abundantly, and St Paul tells us that this love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

That verse is a very good summary of where the first reading from Exodus the Gospel reading of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well lead us.

Both readings speak of the human desire for both physical water and drinking deeply from spiritual wellsprings.

Psalm 63 expresses it beautifully:

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;

my soul is athirst for you.

My flesh also faints for you,

as in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. (Psalm 63.1-2)

This desire for God is the deepest human thirst.

The prophet Isaiah nails it when he says, ‘drink deeply from the wells of salvation.’ (Isaiah 12:3)

That’s not what the Israelites are ready to do in the wilderness.

Yes, they are in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water; and not surprisingly they are thirsty.

But then they also make it a spiritual matter; they grumble to Moses about their thirst and even that they would rather have stayed slaves in Egypt.

That is the human condition, our flawed spiritual condition!

It’s as if we would rather drink from stagnant, brackish and even contaminated wells than the water that refreshes us at the very deepest level.

It’s when we start to rely on things that don’t truly quench our deepest thirst.

The exodus from Egypt delivered the Israelites from slavery to freedom, yet they say they would rather return than be physically thirsty.

It’s as if they drank from a firehose, as the phrase puts it.

Drinking from a firehose is a great image of having so much water that just can’t be drunk because it is coming so quickly.

The Israelites drank in the liberation God gave but lacked the spiritual insight to see what they were learning; they had the chance to learn to depend on God even in barren times, but they weren’t prepared to learn the lesson.

We do better when we sip little and often.

That itself is a good spiritual lesson in this season of Lent.

The woman at the well is ready to do that, and she is not an Israelite, she is a Samaritan, so not part of the Covenant with the God of Israel.

But the Covenant with Israel is not a fence to deny others a relationship with God, but an invitation in Christ to other people to be drawn in.

It’s like the sheep farmers of Australia who, it is said, keep their sheep close at hand not by fencing them in but by sinking wells to which the flocks are drawn.

So this woman comes to a physical well, and ends up drinking from the deepest life-giving spiritual one.

There is no firehose here.

Jesus enables her to takes sips of growth and refreshment, and she learns more about herself and she sees the value to draw others to this well: ‘come,’ she says, ‘see a man who told me all that I ever did.

She is refreshed and gets new insight about herself.

She learns what it means to say, ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’.

The Spirit of God touches the deepest needs and desires of the human heart.

What we explore with this woman, is the nature of the deepest human desire.

What will refresh and sustain when all the frippery is stripped away, passing pleasures and things we think will satisfy, that we think will save us, that we think smooth our lives?

It’s not technology; it’s not superficial relationships; it’s not food; it’s not money.

The universal human desire is to be loved; loved faithfully, unconditionally and with total commitment.

That desire to be loved is accompanied by the need for goodness, beauty and truth to help us keep our bearings.

‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’.

The woman at the well, we learn from the Gospel, has not known faithful, unconditional, committed love.

It transpires that she has had five husbands; that is not a measure of unconditional, committed and faithful love.

What’s she been seeking, what is it, why is it that she doesn’t find refreshment that quenches the depths of her heart?

Christ doesn’t dwell on her past, a past marked by disordered relationships and infidelity.

Instead, in each sip by sip of his wisdom and love, she recognises in Jesus the true husband of her soul; she comes to know the love of her heavenly Father: ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’.

So, these scriptures invite us to drink afresh from the wells of salvation, of which we first sipped in baptism and that we drink in throughout our lives in a life of prayer, reading of scripture, receiving the Sacrament.

She met him at a well; we meet him at the font, and we are invited into that relationship of worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ as God’s love [is] poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

The late Pope Benedict draws this together beautifully:

Thanks to the meeting with Jesus Christ and to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the human being’s faith attains fulfilment, as a response to the fullness of God’s revelation. Each one of us can identify with the Samaritan woman: Jesus is waiting for us, especially in this Season of Lent, to speak to our hearts, to my heart. Let us pause a moment in silence, in our room or in a church or in a separate place. Let us listen to his voice which tells us “If you knew the gift of God…”. (Benedict XVI - Angelus, 27 March 2011)

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, we desire you;

good Lord Jesus, help us to want

to desire you more and more.

Show us the Father’s love

and pour the Spirit afresh into our hearts.

Amen.