Homily: Third Sunday of Lent (A)
Exodus 17:3–7 | Romans 5:1–2, 5–8 | John 4:5–42
8 March 2026
Fr. Ricky Cañet Montañez, AA
A few months ago, someone confided in me. He said, “Father, I do not understand myself.” From the outside, he seemed to have everything in place — a good career, financial security, the freedom to travel, and an active church life. Yet he continued, “I have changed careers three times. I have been in five serious relationships. I have moved homes twice. Every time I tell myself, “This is it. This will finally make me happy. But after a while… I realize something is still missing.” Then he paused and quietly asked, “Baka ako talaga ang problema?” — Maybe I am really the problem. I am sure many of us know that feeling. When things do not turn out the way we hoped, when fulfillment fades sooner than we expected, we begin to wonder whether something within us is not quite right.
When I prayed over today’s Gospel, I thought of him. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband” (John 4:18). Our automatic reaction is often one of disgust at such a display of immorality. However, we can also see it as a story of repeated searching — of searching again and again for something that still does not satisfy. Five husbands may not be our story. But five attempts at finding fulfillment might be — five diets, five business ventures, five boyfriends one after the other, five “new beginnings.” Five times we told ourselves, “This is it.” Five times we were hopeful and yet five times we end up disappointed. Often, what looks like immorality is really a deeper thirst of the human heart.
In the First Reading from the Book of Exodus, the Israelites, in their thirst for water, cry out in the desert, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?” (Exodus 17:3). Although God satisfies their thirst with water from a rock, a deeper doubt surfaces in their hearts: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” (Exodus 17:7). They are freed from slavery, yet still restless. Liberation did not remove their thirst; it exposed it. Meanwhile, in our gospel, Jesus opens a conversation with the Samaritan woman with a simple request: “Give me a drink” (John 4:7). A tired and thirsty Messiah waits. As the conversation unfolds, He tells her, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14). It is not that she is being unreasonable. It is that she has been drawing from wells that cannot hold what her heart truly longs for.
Similarly, our problem is not that we are thirsty. Thirst is part of being human. Our problem is that we keep trying to quench an infinite thirst with finite wells. We expect permanent joy from temporary successes. We expect absolute security from fragile relationships. We ask created things to give us what only the Creator can give. It is like stubbornly hoping to quench our thirst with sea water — the more we drink, the deeper the thirst becomes. After enough disappointment, we come to the conclusion that we ourselves are the problem. We find our consolation in the Second Reading where St. Paul reminds us in the Epistle to the Romans: “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). Poured out — not rationed, not earned! And even more striking: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Before we corrected our patterns. Before we broke our cycles. Before we found the right well, God had already prepared for us the source of Living Water. One particular detail in the Gospel says everything: “The woman left her water jar and went into the town” (John 4:28). She leaves the jar because she came for ordinary water and encountered the Source. Nothing in her external situation immediately changes. What changes is her centre. She is no longer searching anxiously; she is witnessing joyfully.
Perhaps this is the realisation we need. It is not that we are the problem. Maybe our repeated disappointments are not proof of our failure but signs that our hearts are made for more than what this world can offer. St. Augustine writes at the very beginning of the Confessions (Book I, Chapter 1): “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” Restlessness is not rebellion. It is homesickness—God calling our hearts home. The man I spoke with thought he was defective yet I believe he was simply thirsty for Living Water. As we all are!
Thus, this week, before we go crazy, in search of something new to fill our longing and tell ourselves, “Maybe this time it will work”, let us just pause and ask ourselves quietly: Are we drinking from the wrong well? We thirst because we were made for God. May this Lent not be about trying one more strategy for self-improvement but about finally sitting at the well, admitting our thirst without shame, and allowing Christ to be our Living Water.
Sunday Gospel Reflections 