JESUS ASKS FOR A DRINK. SHE BEGINS ASKING QUESTIONS.

The question comes to you while you listen. You'd like to understand one thing about faith better, but look at the others and it seems to you that everything is clear to them. You're gonna send it back. You don't know if it's too simple, too uncomfortable, or if someone thinks that, asking a question, you're already questioning everything.

Then open the Gospel of John and meet a woman who asks questions. A Jesus. Ask him why he asks her for a drink, where she could get the water she talks about, where to worship God. The conversation continues right through his words.

It is the Samaritan of chapter 4. We don't know his name. The story instead gives us a recognizable voice, capable of wondering, questioning and seeking. And he introduces us Jesus that approaches her with a very concrete request: ♪Give me to drink ♪

It all starts with a thirst

Jesus is tired of the journey and sits near Jacob's well, near Sychar. It's about noon. The woman arrives to draw water. He speaks the word to her and she is surprised that a Jew asks something of a Samaritan woman: the Gospel signals the distance between the two groups.

Dialogue goes from water to life received by God, from the place of worship to the place of worship of the Father, to the revelation of Jesus as Messiah. The woman then returns to the city and invites others to meet him. The meeting does not remain closed between the two: it opens a road also to the village.

Jesus reveals himself, and she asks, listens and replies. The conversation moves one sentence at a time. Stay with her questions: perhaps one you carry has already found a place beside that well.

The question you haven't said yet

Maybe you'd like to understand a page of the Bible. Perhaps a choice of the Church leaves you perplexed, or a word heard at Mass seems very far from what you live. You may need an explanation, to distinguish a teaching from an opinion, or to tell first why the issue touches you.

You can look for a prepared interlocutor and tell where the doubt comes from. Sometimes the answers change when the precision of the question changes. I don't understand this passage. I don't know what the source is. I've heard two different things, and I'd like to direct myself. These are possible beginnings of a serious conversation.

A sincere question may also take time. Those who listen may have to look, study, recognize that they do not know. There is something reassuring about a person who does not respond immediately: he takes you seriously enough to want to respond well.

A Woman Who Talks About God

The Samaritan woman is often remembered especially for the passage on her affective life. That is part of the story; so are his questions about worship and the Messiah. Leaving room for the whole conversation allows us to meet her as a person who thinks and seeks.

For a reader it can be an important detail. Did it ever happen to you that a spiritual theme would become, as soon as you spoke, a conversation only about your family role? Your life includes relationships and responsibility, but it also includes thought, research, questions that deserve attention.

There is no need to attribute today's debates to the Samaritan woman. But we can let his presence in the Gospel question how we listen to ourselves in Christian communities. Who is invited to speak? What questions do we welcome? Which ones do we liquidate before we understand them?

Listening can be seen from how we respond

When someone asks you a question about your faith, you may feel put to the test. It happens especially if the issue is delicate or if you have already met irony. You can try to ask what you want to understand before preparing a defense. The same phrase can arise from curiosity, pain or simple confusion.

This does not make all answers equivalent. In Christian dialogue, the truth of what we say and the respect of the person to whom we entrust it are important. If you quote a teaching, you can indicate its source; if you are expressing your own reflection, you can say so simply.

We can also recognize when a conversation needs a better context. An online comment or a noisy dinner do not always allow you to face everything. Proposing another moment can be a way of giving space, as long as that space really exists.

From the well to your own conversation

In his Angelus of 12 March 2023, Francis recalled the thirst for closeness, attention and listening that can come to us from the people he met every day. The image of the well can also accompany us here: someone brings a need that we risk not feeling, if we imagine that we already know everything about him.

You could go back to John's chapter 4 and read the words of the two interlocutors calmly. Then choose a question that you have long been holding and looking for someone to deal with. The Samaritan woman gives us this very concrete possibility: to speak before Jesus and to allow a conversation to continue.