The Relentlessness of Divine Mercy

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, March 7, 2021

The story of the Woman at the Well speaks about the relentlessness of God’s mercy. God is coming after us. The Bible is not about our quest for God, rather God’s quest for us. Although our quest for God is vital and valid, but it is not exciting. Our quest for God is imperfect and unreliable. God is after us. Today’s Gospel (John 4) says “Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar…” He begins his journey in Judea in the southeast, and goes up to Galilee in the north. Why is his entrance into Samaria that important? Most religious and pious Jews would avoid going through Samaria because it was unclean and the land of the half-free. To embark on such a journey, pious Jews would go around Samaria. But what did Jesus do? He goes into it. He is after the marginalized, the rejects, the unfree, the forgotten ones at the margins of the society. In this move, we see that God is after us and is crossing the boundaries we have set. He’s crossing the racial and gender boundaries that keep people away from each other. By the Well of Samaria, he, a male Jew talks to a Samaritan, not just a Samaritan, but a Samaritan woman which is forbidden at the time. The fact that this Samaritan woman came to the Well in the noon and alone is unusual. Back in the day, people go to the Well in the morning and evening, not during the hottest time of the day. And no one goes alone. The Samaritan woman came alone and at odd time because she is a public sinner, and wants to avoid the ridicule and insult of her community. Jesus didn’t care about her social status. He also crosses that boundary too, and reaches out to her. God is relentless! 

Why is God reaching out to us? Because he wants to draw us into the dynamics of divine life. God wants to share his life with us. The breathtaking words of Prophet Isaiah says “As a young man marries a young woman, so will your builder marry you” (Is. 62:5). Your builder—God who builds you into existence wants to marry you. He does not want to dominate you and make life miserable for you. He wants to marry you. Marriage is a relationship of intimacy. It is the greatest kind of intimacy for it is the sharing of life. That’s what God wants. God wants to marry us. In ancient Israel, stopping at a Well shows that someone is thinking about marriage. When Abraham sent people to find a wife for his son, Isaac, they stopped by a Well, and it was there that they found a wife for Isaac. Jacob finds his wife also by a Well. Moses sits down by a Well, and there he met Zipporah whom he marries. In the story under discussion, we have a man sitting down by a Well with a woman. According to St. Augustine, the woman at the Well symbolizes the Church. And what is the Church? It is the Bride of Christ who is the Bridegroom. To the woman, Jesus says, “Give me a drink.” Responding to his request, the woman said, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman for a drink?” She reminds Jesus of the hostility between Jews and Samaritans which has made it impossible for them to share anything in common. Again, Jesus does not care! He does not give a hoot about someone’s ethnicity or nationality or gender. He has come to share his life with everyone. So, he said to the woman, “If you knew the gift  of God and who is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him and he would have given you the living water.” Our builder wants to marry us. He wants to share his divine life with us. And through the Mass, the sacraments, prayer etc. we participate in the divine life. 

We have talked about the relentlessness of God’s mercy, but God’s mercy is also demanding. Some people think that the more we stress God’s mercy, the less we stress God’s demands. That’s not true. It is a non-biblical and non-Christian logic. God is merciful! The name of God is mercy. This is true, and it can never be overemphasized and overstressed. However, it is mercy and demand— moral demand. Jesus speaks about God who is vastly merciful, but he also talks about keeping his commandments. St. Augustine says that the Well which the woman visits everyday symbolizes concupiscence desire, which means errant desire— spiritually dysfunctional desire. Regularly, we go to a Well to fill ourselves up with wealth, honor, pleasure and power etc to get a little bit of satisfaction. But before we know it, we are thirsty again. So, we keep going to the Well in a desperate rhythm that gets us to nowhere. There is something that we go to, and after drinking from it or of it, we feel a bit better. But it is only a matter of time before we are hungry again and again returns to it. That’s precisely what Jesus said to the woman when he said, “Everyone who drinks this water 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.” Jesus wants to end her insatiable thirst that drove her from one man to another. He wants to break her pattern of returning to inordinate desire that doesn’t go away. He wants her to stop coming to the Well and come to the water he wants to give to her. As soon as the woman asks Jesus for his own water that will end her thirst, Jesus says to her, “Go and call your husband and come back.” The woman replies, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answers her, “You are right in saying, “I do not have a husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.” Do you see what is going on here? God is exceedingly and lavishly merciful and kind. God wants to marry us. God is after us. God forgives. But God makes demand too. What is that demand? Let go of things that are blocking the flow of divine life. The mercy of God demands change. It is the reason why Jesus calls us to metanoia— conversion.

Finally, no one experiences God without being sent. God’s mercy is always sending us on mission. After her encounter with Jesus, the woman puts down her water jar, goes into the city and announces the presence of Christ. With that, she becomes the first evangelist in the Gospel of John. The symbolism of putting down the water jar is conversion. She puts down her old addicted pattern, and declares she is done with is. What is the Well that you frequently visit? Name it! I have mine, you have yours. What are they? Get rid of them and respond to God’s love and mercy. What is the water jar? Unless you are willing to put that thing down, you can’t move forward. The moment you do, you will become an evangelizer. The Samaritan woman went to town to tell her people about a man who cracked the code, uncovered the reason why she kept doing the things she was doing that were wrong only after she put her jar down. She became an instant evangelizer. What is evangelization? It is one beggar telling another beggar where there is bread. Real evangelization comes from people who put down the water jar under the influence of the divinizing mercy of Jesus and now wants to tell the world about it. They are beggars too, but they have found where bread is and they want others to know about it.