Homily for the Sunday Mass of March 8: “Give me a drink”

Sunday 8 March 2026
3nd Sunday of Lent – ​​Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st Reading: Exodus 17:3-7
Psalm: 94 (95), 1-2, 6-7ab, 7d-8a.9
2^rd Reading: Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
Gospel: John 4, 5-42

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

"Lord, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty anymore, and that I may not have to come here to draw water."

And one might ask: Does Jesus give this woman the living water he speaks of? And if he does, how does he give it to her? Jesus' response to this woman's question seems irrelevant, since he replies: "Go, call your husband, and come back.".

You may have noticed that in my Gospel reading, I left a moment of silence before the woman's response, because it seemed to me that an abyss opened up for her at that moment. What should I answer? She knows full well that she has had five husbands and that the man she is living with now is not her husband… What should she say? And she gives the most understated answer, to tell the truth. She doesn't recount her whole story, which is undoubtedly too complicated; she simply states the reality of the moment: "I don't have a husband." And Jesus said to him: "There, you're right." And he reveals to him the knowledge he has of his own life: “There, you speak truly”: this is what it means to drink the living water; it means to do the truth. This truth that sets us free, says Jesus (Jn 8:32), this truth that brings us to the light (Jn 3:21), the truth that is the light God gives. Doing the truth puts us in a right relationship with God. God doesn't so much ask us not to sin, he asks us above all not to say that we haven't sinned. And if you remember Jesus' dialogue with Nicodemus (Jn 3:16-21), you remember the alternative Jesus presents: There is the one who does evil and hides in darkness so that no one will see what he does, and on the other hand, there is the one who does the truth. The alternative is not between doing evil and doing good, but between doing evil and doing the truth. And as soon as I become aware of my life, I recognize my sins, I do the truth and I am in the light of God.

This living water that the Lord gives us is the light of truth that allows us to deepen our relationship with God. The woman doesn't change the subject when she immediately asks: where should we worship, how should we worship? No, she is engaged in the dialogue. Because she is seeking the truth, the question of God can then be clearly posed… but in darkness, one cannot clearly pose the question of God. And this woman has a blessed experience because she runs to find those in her village to tell them: "Come see a man who told me everything I've done!"For her, it was a positive experience that Jesus revealed the truth of his life to her, an experience so positive that she wanted to share it with others. And no doubt, a love for Jesus grew in this woman's heart.

Thérèse repeatedly returns to the figure of the Samaritan woman, and quite spontaneously, she connects it to two passages from the Gospel of John that speak of thirst. She links them to the cry of Jesus on the cross: "I'm thirsty." with this saying of Jesus to the Samaritan woman: "Give me a drink"In the experience she had in July 1887, at St. Peter's Cathedral, on a Sunday, seeing an image of Jesus on the cross emerging from her missal, she realized that few people were bringing the blood Jesus shed for sinners to them. She felt a desire rising within her to bring this blood of Jesus to sinners and to bring sinners to Jesus. She wrote:

The cry of Jesus on the Cross also resounded continually in my heart: “I thirst!” These words kindled within me an unknown and intense fervor… I wanted to give drink to my Beloved, and I myself felt consumed by the thirst for souls… […]

Ah! Since that unique grace, my desire to save souls has grown daily. I seemed to hear Jesus saying to me, as he did to the Samaritan woman, "Give me a drink!" It was a true exchange of love; to souls I gave the blood of Jesus, and to Jesus I offered those same souls refreshed by his Divine dew. (MsA 46)

Thérèse doesn't initially look at the living water that Jesus promises, but she hears Jesus' request: "Give me a drink," and she wants to respond to the Lord's thirst. And she seeks to understand how to respond to Jesus' love. We heard this in the second reading: “Perhaps someone would risk death for a good man. But the proof that God loves us is that while we were still sinners—Even a few verses earlier, he said: as sinners, we are enemies of God —"It's because Christ died for us." Jesus gave his life for us; that shows how much he loves us! But how can we respond to such love when we are so small, so weak? Thérèse explains this at the very beginning of manuscript B; she says:

Ah! If all weak and imperfect souls felt what the smallest of all souls feels, the soul of your little Thérèse, not one would despair of reaching the summit of the mountain of love, since Jesus does not ask for great deeds, but only surrender and gratitude […]

So this is all that Jesus asks of us; he has no need of our works, but only of our love, for this same God, who declares that he has no need to tell us if he is hungry, did not hesitate to beg the Samaritan woman for a little water. He was thirsty… but in saying, “Give me a drink,” it was the love of his poor creature that the Creator of the universe was asking for. He thirsted for love… (MsB 1)

Yes, brothers and sisters, in this Gospel of the Samaritan woman, these two great realities are revealed to us:

The question of truth: to do the truth, to live in the truth. And this Lenten season is here so that the Lord can reveal to us—which is the meaning of the word truth in the Greek language: unveiling—the truth of our lives, so that he can show us through his word where we are and how to move forward.

And the second great thing that this Gospel highlights is Jesus' thirst for our love. As Thérèse says, he doesn't ask us for great works so much, he asks us above all to love him, and to love him by receiving his love.

Car

I'll let Thérèse finish. It's in one of her poems, poem 24, "Remember," where her sister Céline asked her to write a poem to tell Jesus all that Céline had done for him. And Thérèse, mischievously, went ahead and wrote a poem so that Céline would hear all that Jesus had done for her.

10. Remember that at the edge of the fountain

A traveler weary of the way

Made it overflow on the Samaritan woman

The floods of love contained within her breast

Ah! I know the One who asked for a drink

He is the Gift of God, the source of glory,

It is He, the Water that springs forth

He is the one who told us:

" Come to me. "

11. “Come to me, poor burdened souls”

"Your heavy burdens will soon be lightened"

"And forever being quenched"

"From within you springs will gush forth."

I thirst, O my Jesus! I long for this Water.

Deign to flood my soul with its divine torrents

To fix my stay

In the Ocean of Love

I come to you.

Amen.