The Witness of the Woman at the Well

From the first few verses of chapter four of John’s Gospel, the Lord takes the initiative: He is the efficient cause of the New Evangelization at His meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. The Evangelization is new because He passed directly through Samaria on His journey from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north. Jews normally bypassed Samaria by hugging the River Jordan to avoid the territory of the mixed-race and mixed-cult Samaritans. The Evangelization is also novel in that Jesus discoursed with a woman alone, discouraged in the Jewish tradition; He shared a cup with a Samaritan, again, unusual for a Jew; and He conversed with a known, public sinner. These actions were not how a typical Jewish rabbi of the first century would conduct Himself, but Jesus desired to bring the Good News to every individual. Within the first six verses, John relates how Jesus knew of the jealousy of the Pharisees as to Jesus’ influence, seen objectively in the number of baptisms; and that Jesus decided to go through Samaria and sat down, at noon, at a well. There He awaited the woman. 

The anonymous woman known only by her affiliation as a Samaritan is the material cause of Jesus’ New Evangelization; her heart is the calcified but not yet petrified matter upon which the tekton Jesus was to work. A tekton was employed as a carpenter or a stone mason, a craftsman who worked with hard materials. It seems that Jesus’ first tool of choice upon her hardened heart was surprise. He spoke – again, as the efficient cause, He took the initiative – and asked her for a drink of water. She was startled into challenging Him as to the propriety of His request. I think of the prayer warriors on the sidewalks near abortuaries and how many women entering there with two precious lives and emerging with only one challenge those praying evangelizers as to the propriety of their actions or their right to be present.

Jesus dazzles the woman with a fascinating conundrum. A moment ago, He had asked for water; now, in verse 10, He promises “living water,” the Formal cause of His New Evangelization. While the woman’s mind turns to the immediate physical implements of drawing water from a well (“still” water) and the greater difficulty of reaching running water (“living”), Jesus referred to the vital life of the Holy Spirit, another efficient cause. The woman reaches back into history to question Jesus’ authority: “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” Her first roadblock was “How can you do this?” Her second roadblock was “Who are you to say you can do this?” How many blockades are found in the human hearts of our secular, post-Christian, humanistic culture! Today the objections are to the reality of objective Truth itself as each individual claims for themselves the right to define their identity, their gender, the meaning of life and the right to keep or discard it. Evangelizers today must follow Jesus as tektons as they work upon hearts hardened by lack of exposure to the Holy Spirit’s living water.

Jesus describes this vital water which quenches every thirst in verses 13-14; His form of evangelization quickens her interest and elicits from her eagerness to acquire this quaff. Jesus is just warming up as the Formal Cause; He has more surprises – or one may say shocks – for the Samaritan in verses 16-18. He exposes her wound to His healing touch: her multiple marital infidelities. While catechists cannot rise to this level of evangelization unaided, the Holy Spirit works through those docile to His inspirations. The words of the Holy Spirit flow through willing instruments to touch the hearts of the hearers. He not only exposes their wounds but by His touch, heals them. The uncanniness of being deeply touched by the words of a stranger (be they street evangelizer, priest, catechist, or teacher) quickens the interest of the unchurched, the “nones,” practical atheists, and fallen-away Catholics.

As the woman now engages Jesus in conversation in verses 19-24, He assures her that one day, all would worship in Spirit and in Truth: according to the spirit and not just the letter of the law; in the living Spirit of God who animates us; and without admixture of the errors of idolatry. The Samaritan, moved by the power of His Presence and His promises, confesses her faith in the Messiah who would one day come; Jesus then reveals Himself to her as the Final Cause, the Kingdom of God Incarnate; intimate communion with God. Her hardened heart softened with the living water of the Holy Spirit, the Samaritan leaves her water jar; her thirst has been quenched. She is, conversely, on fire to share this Good News. The evangelized now becomes the efficient cause of the evangelization of her townsfolk. Her personal encounter with the Messiah had enlivened her soul, and having heard the proclamation of the Kingdom, she proclaims it herself.

As related in verses 27-35, the disciples join Jesus at the well just as the woman goes out into the field to gather in the harvest of her fellow Samaritans. Jesus alludes to this when He advises His disciples: “Lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for harvest.” I wonder if this statement perplexed the disciples: Jews looking for a harvest from Samaria? Christians might have the same mindset if asked to evangelize the American Atheists or the American Humanist Association. One would not expect much of a return for the Lord’s labor there. Yet as the Samaritans gather around the Lord, the efficient, formal, and final cause of His New Evangelization, He converts their hearts and teaches the disciples to fearlessly blaze trails in new territory. He shows His disciples how to speak to people traditionally shunned. He engaged the culture where they were but did not leave them there; He fed them on the finest wheat and whetted their appetite for more. By the end of the passage under review, verse 42, the Samaritans confessed their belief that Jesus “is indeed the Savior of the world.”

The woman at the well joyously drew from the Living Water of salvation to slake her own thirst. Satiated with the Holy Spirit, she ran off immediately to share the Good News with the townsfolk whose company she customarily avoided. She was known to be a public sinner; shame of her sinfulness drove her to draw water at noon. Once the Word of God touched her heart and healed her of her humiliation, she “went in haste” to evangelize others, just as Mary hurried to the side of her kinswoman Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-41 Second Edition RSV). Once the Word of God is received, of His very nature, He must be shared. Material causes convert into efficient causes, working in concert with the Holy Spirit.

Our society dammed God’s living water up into the private provinces of our homes and churches, sweeping Him out of the public square, out of public schools, out of the fabric of everyday life. Without His dewfall, the foundations of secular society are desiccated; the topsoil cracks; the gray grass crunches beneath our footfalls. The Lord is the final cause, the end towards which our souls tend: eternal beatitude. He is the efficient cause, as He and His Holy Spirit work through His Church to call souls out of the desert. He has provided us with His living water, the formal cause – the Good News – which saturates the material cause, those capable of drenching their thirst at His deep well of redemption. 

From the first six verses, Christ is the efficient cause, the agent of evangelization. He begins to give the formal cause, His promise of living water, by verse 10, and engages the Samaritan, the material cause, in conversation. Though He was working with the stony material of a heart hardened by the sins of infidelity and idolatry, by verse 27 the master craftsman had carved out a heart ready to receive the living water and share it with others. The material cause became the efficient cause as she cried out to the townspeople to come to the Samaritan well to meet the Savior, the final cause. These Samaritans accepted the Good News proclaimed to them by the woman, the original material and then the efficient cause; yet their hearts held back full commitment until they heard and saw the Messiah. By the end of the passage, the final cause, the efficient cause, and the formal cause, Jesus Christ, fashioned “something beautiful for God.”