By this third week of Lent, we come to the well of the Eucharist, tired, worn out and thirsty. So too, does the Samaritan woman and even Jesus Himself.

We are thirsting for water as a basic human need, and it is through our common human heritage that God intends to touch our lives and to replenish our spirits by opening the floodgates of His eternal love within us.

God became man to dwell among us, and today He was with us in the Sacrament of Confession – reconciling us to Himself through our admission of sin and sorrow.

The Samaritan woman comes to the well because she is spiritually spent; she is tangled in a web of deceit of her own construction. But, Jesus untangles self-deception slowly until He and the woman come face to face with the reality of her own humanity.

Jesus comes to the well desiring to be replenished by our lives; not the lives we ought to live, or the lives we hope to live. He comes to soak in the reality of our own humanness, uniting them for a better life, a more fulfilled life, a responding life to God.

The demands of this better life are great, but in our practices of Lent we experience Jesus’ spiritual desire to walk with us, so that together we can be strong on our road to heaven.

And, once in a while, he expects us to turn to Him and say: “Sir, give me this water to drink.”

May His compassion fill us with hope and lead us through a lent of repentance to the beauty of Easter joy.