One theme runs through all three of today’s readings. It is a very important and comforting theme. You could say that it is the heart of the Good News. That theme is: we are loved in our sins.
We see this in the First Reading: in spite of the ingratitude and grumblings of the people, God doesn’t write off his people, but shows his love for them by providing water for them in the desert. The message is explicitly stated in the Second Reading: Paul says, “What proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners: And we see the message in action in the Gospel.
Jesus’ approach to this outcast woman was ever so gentle. He didn’t force himself into her life. Had he done so she would have immediately closed up. There is a world of difference between asking people for the key to their house, and battering the door down.
In fact, he began from a position of weakness. He began with a request for a drink of water. In this way he disposed her to receive the gift he wanted to give her. His heart was already open to her. Now she opened her heart to him. A wonderful dialogue ensued, and a marvelous exchange took place.
He treated her with great respect. Not a hint of judgment or condemnation. The holier a person is the less he is inclined to judge others. Right from the start he was looking into her heart, yet he did not make her feel bad. She didn’t feel judged. Rather, she felt accepted and understood.
No one ever paid such close and loving attention to her before. Jesus explained her life to her more sympathetically than she’d been able to explain it to herself. Before she realized it, she had shared with him the whole story of her sad and confused life.
How could someone as pure as Jesus understand a woman like her? Kahlil Gibran says, “Only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters.”
Jesus was able to see into her secret being, into that part of her which longed for true love, which was pure and innocent, thirsting to be seen as a person and not as an object. She was a deeply wounded woman, wounded by a series of broken relationships, something that is becoming quite common today.
Christ meets us where we are. He says to us what he said to that lost woman: “If you only knew the gift God wants to give you.”
We find it very difficult to admit our poverty, weakness, and sins. Hence we are unable to receive the “gift of God” Jesus wishes to give us.
It doesn’t do us much good to be loved for being perfect. We need to be accepted and loved precisely as sinners. Only the person who has experienced this kind of love can know what it is.
Being loved like that gives one surprising courage and energy. It puts us in touch with our true nature, and to touch our true nature is a kind of home-coming.