Today's Gospel March 15 2020 with comment

From the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John 4,5: 42-XNUMX.
At that time, Jesus came to a city in Samaria called Sychar, close to the ground that Jacob had given Joseph his son:
here was Jacob's well. Jesus therefore, tired of the journey, sat by the well. It was around noon.
Meanwhile, a woman from Samaria arrived to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
In fact, his disciples had gone to town to stock up on food.
But the Samaritan woman said to him, "How come you, a Jew, ask me for a drink, that I am a Samaritan woman?" In fact, the Jews do not maintain good relations with the Samaritans.
Jesus replied: "If you knew the gift of God and who is the one who says to you:" Give me a drink! ", You yourself would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
The woman said to him: "Lord, you have no means of drawing and the well is deep; where do you get this living water from?
Are you perhaps greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank it with his children and his flock? »
Jesus replied: "Whoever drinks this water will thirst again;
but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty, on the contrary, the water that I will give him will become in him a source of water that spurts for eternal life ».
"Sir, the woman said to him, give me this water, so that I will no longer be thirsty and will not continue to come here to draw water."
He said to her, "Go and call your husband and then come back here."
The woman replied: "I have no husband." Jesus said to her: "You said well" I have no husband ";
in fact you have had five husbands and what you have now is not your husband; in this you have told the truth ».
The woman replied, "Lord, I see that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped God on this mountain and you say that Jerusalem is the place where you have to worship ».
Jesus says to her: "Believe me, woman, the time has come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
You worship what you don't know, we worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews.
But the time has come, and this is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; because the Father looks for such worshipers.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. "
The woman replied: "I know that the Messiah (that is, the Christ) must come: when he comes, he will announce everything to us."
Jesus said to her, "It is I who am speaking to you."
At that moment his disciples arrived and they marveled that he was talking to a woman. However, no one said to him, "What do you want?" Or "Why are you talking to her?"
Meanwhile the woman left the jug, went to the city and said to the people:
"Come and see a man who told me everything I've done. Could it be the Messiah? »
Then they left the city and went to him.
Meanwhile the disciples prayed to him: "Rabbi, eat."
But he said, "I have food to eat that you don't know."
And the disciples asked each other: "Has anyone brought him food?"
Jesus said to them: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to do his work.
Do not you say: There are still four months and then the harvest comes? Behold, I say unto you: Lift up thy eyes and look upon the fields which are already bleaching for the harvest.
And who reaps receives wages and reaps fruit for eternal life, so that he who sows and who reaps can enjoy it together.
Here in fact the saying is realized: one sows and one reaps.
I sent you to reap what you have not worked; others worked and you took over their work ».
Many Samaritans of that city believed in him for the words of the woman who declared: "He told me everything I did."
And when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days.
Many more believed for his word
and they said to the woman: "It is no longer because of your word that we believe; but because we ourselves have heard and we know that he is truly the savior of the world ».

St. James of Saroug (ca 449-521)
Syrian monk and bishop

Homily on our Lord and Jacob, on the Church and Rachel
"Are you perhaps older than our father Jacob?"
The sight of Rachel's beauty made Jacob somewhat stronger: he was able to lift the huge stone from above the well and water the flock (Gen 29,10) ... In Rachel he married he saw the symbol of the Church. Therefore it was necessary that embracing her weep and suffer (v. 11), to prefigure with her marriage the sufferings of the Son ... How much more beautiful the wedding of the royal Bridegroom than those of the ambassadors! Jacob cried for Rachel by marrying her; our Lord covered the Church with his blood by saving it. Tears are a symbol of blood, since not without pain they come out of the eyes. The weeping of the just Jacob is a symbol of the great suffering of the Son, by means of which the Church of all peoples has been saved.

Come, contemplate our Master: he came to his Father in the world, he canceled himself to carry out his project in humility (Phil 2,7) ... He saw the people as thirsty flocks and the source of life closed by sin as by a rock. He saw the Church similar to Rachel: then he launched himself towards her, he turned sin as heavy as a rock upside down. He opened the baptistery for his bride so that she could bathe in it; he drew from it, he gave drinks to the people of the earth, as to his flocks. From his omnipotence he lifted the heavy weight of sins; has exposed the fresh water spring for the whole world ...

Yes, our Lord has taken great pains for the Church. For love, the Son of God sold his sufferings to marry, at the price of his wounds, the abandoned Church. For her who adored idols, she suffered on the cross. For her he wanted to give himself, so that it could be his, all immaculate (Eph 5,25-27). He agreed to feed the whole flock of men with the big staff of the cross; did not refuse to suffer. Races, nations, tribes, crowds and peoples, all agreed to lead in order to have the Church only for themselves in return.