(Jn 4:5-42)
In the passage of the Samaritan woman, Jn contrasts the mechanisms of religiosity and the dynamics of Faith, comparing the images of an ancient Well to a fresh Source of Water [cf. Greek text].
While on a well one has to stoop to draw with effort, the Source is there at disposal. It does not absorb energies, it activates them.
And from the perspective of Faith, it becomes overall, generative: cosmic outside and acutely divine within.
One can even immerse oneself in it without danger of becoming trapped and drowning.
The ever-flowing and ever-new pool of water is every proposal that Providence offers to grasp in the events of the inner life and in the ever-changing reality.
The water in the well is at the bottom of a dark tunnel - only here and there animated by reflections, from distant light sources, external.
It is almost stagnant and does not definitively cure the thirst, rather it demands to be drawn again and again, with undiminished sweat.
Sometimes the bucket with which one claims to draw the Person of the Christ who is already there, is pulled up badly, wobbles and falls down - with no chance of recovery.
The common religious sense leads to having to continually recover or procure perfections - by centring examination, therapy, and relationships, on the self: examine, detect, correct, redo; verify and start over again.
In the end exhausted, disappointed, annoyed.
Devotion and regulatory fulfilments do not produce satiety - we know this well - indeed, paradoxically, they accentuate God Face thirst.
In such growing laceration, unfulfilled desire threatens to ruin the main lines of our personality, and the impulse for the Path towards Another realisation - imprecise perhaps, but Ours.
Despite the constant forced return to drink and despite the 'certainty' of doctrines and disciplines, when religious piety becomes self-centred, it produces existential dissatisfaction and spiritual bewilderment.
Living Faith is a Relationship. It proceeds from a God who reveals Himself, questions us and calls by name.
In evolution, this dynamic establishes an invisible Presence in the hidden Self, unquenchable fire of our founding Eros.
Relationship of the believer with God has several approaches. A first stage is that of the Faith-Assent: the person recognises himself in a knowledges’ world that corresponds to her/him.
But already in the First Testament, Faith speaks of a stronger bond: the reliance of the Bride who has full confidence on the Bridegroom.
Faith lived in the Spirit of the Risen One then takes on other facets, which are decisive in bringing colour, maturity, fullness, and joy of life.
The son of God makes himself brother and intimate with the Lord not simply by a common believing, even passionate, but by a personal inner action.
Step which is precisely a kind of Appropriation. Faith-Magnet: it is configured like a ‘coup de main’.
The soul-bride reads the sign of the times, interprets the surrounding reality, own inclinations... and grasping the brought, meaning and scope of the Future, anticipates and actualizes it.
But the ultimate (I would say the pinnacle) perhaps even more “perfect” stage, of such Faith-Trigger is that of Faith-Marvel.
Revelation-Amazement: it configures the specific belief of the Incarnation, because it recognises the Treasures that are hidden behind our dark sides.
Pearls that will be a wonder to discover.
In this way, the pierced cocoon will make its Butterfly, which is not “confirmation”, or prototype-approved construction, but Enchantment.
It is magic and a new pact of sunsets and sunrises. Unveiling, from a glowing magma, that gushes forth.
Christ sits on the Source, not on the well. Rather, he overlaps it.
[3rd Sunday of Lent (year A), March 8, 2026]
