Thirsting for her faith (St. Augustine)

     A woman came. She is a symbol of the Church not yet made righteous.  Righteousness follows from the conversation.  She came in ignorance, she found Christ, and he enters into conversation with her…

     The Samaritans did not form part of the Jewish people; they were foreigners. The fact that she came from a foreign people is part of the symbolic meaning, for she is a symbol of the Church.  The Church was to come from the Gentiles, of a different race from the Jews.

     We must then recognize ourselves in her words and in her person… She found faith in Christ, who was using her as a symbol to teach us what was to come. She came then to draw water.  She had simply come to draw water; in the normal way of man or woman.

     Jesus says to her:  Give me water to drink…. But the one who was asking for a drink of water was thirsting for her faith. He asks for a drink, and he promises a drink.  He is in need, as one hoping to receive, yet he is rich, as one about to satisfy the thirst of others.  He says:  If you knew the gift of God.  The gift of God is the Holy Spirit.  But he is still using veiled language as he speaks to the woman and gradually enters into her heart.

--St. Augustine, Treatise on the Gospel of John

Image source:  Woman at the Well, 4^th-century Catacomb painting, Via Latina, Rome,

https://russianicons.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/the-woman-at-the-well/

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