Reflections on John 4

To Alexi-Noelle

Christ did not come to this world with a type of spirituality but a penetrating gaze that infuses into the human heart a love that lasts forever. In the eyes of Christ, we encounter God’s human sympathy that shatters the hardness of the heart and our indifference towards our destiny. The more we look into his eyes the more we become certain of our vocation, our destiny, and who this man is, this man who looks at us in such a way that it provokes us to have compassion for our human fragility.

Two thousand years ago, in what seems to be an ordinary event, a woman’s life was changed by a conquering gaze that awakened her freedom. She was an attractive Samaritan, a woman who had many husbands. By “happy chance,” she went to Jacob’s well while a Jewish man was resting there from his tireless work of bringing all people to himself. She knew he was sitting there but did not pay attention to him. She was paying attention to her own affairs, to her own problems that she created. The Nazarene, like other men, was probably attracted to this woman. He thirsted for her heart, that is, he had a desire to give his spirit to her. He said, “Give me a drink.” She was surprised and forgot what she was thinking about. She had the common conception of religion we have today, a preconception that religion suffocates you with its rules and doctrines. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Some narrow-minded Jews refused to talk to people who did not share their views of God and the world. This woman probably encountered those kinds of people, people whose arrogance made them walk past people whose quality of life was not up to their standards (the Good Samaritan story). But this Jew was different. The way he looked at her was different and he proposed to her something that she probably suppressed in her heart, a proposal that attracted her because here was someone who took her heart seriously.

What is interesting about this short conversation is that the woman gained certainty of who she was talking to when she gained certainty of herself. “He told me everything I have done.” What seems to be an ordinary event with a typical Jew was an encounter with a Presence that saved her from her inhumanity. The more a person is certain of her own heart, the more she becomes aware of the infinite closeness of God. This is the certainty Christ gives us. The woman lacked understanding (vs. 22) and Christ gave her the understanding that her five husbands never gave her, an understanding about her destiny, about an everlasting life that is worth living. This type of person, a person who is aware of her needs, is the type that the Father wants (vs. 23).

“He told me everything I have done.” Christ knew what she had done and yet, he never looked at her with wrathful eyes. He recognized her longing for the everlasting, for an infinite embrace from her Father. God looks at the depth of the human person and never divorces Himself from her. This look, this gaze, provoked the Samaritan woman to be naked in front of her Creator and her neighbor: “The woman…went into the town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done.’” She was not afraid to be vulnerable anymore, even to the people she knew. What she had done was embarrassing. It made people look down upon her. Yet she knew that Someone looks at her, even with her fragility and faults, with an awareness of her absolute value. Worship begins with an awareness of an Other who has a sense of our worth. In the end of it all, only this profound look matters. What matters is what is within this look. To discover this look, to discover what is within this look, is the Christian life.

How do we recognize the gaze of Christ today? Yes, we recognize him first and foremost in the Eucharist for it is there that we become deaf to our rationalizations and conceptions of God, and our hearts are attuned to a “luminous darkness” that melts our souls. We recognize Christ in prayer. But where else? How else do we recognize him? It is very easy to say that we recognize Christ in the sacraments. It is difficult to recognize him elsewhere. How do we know when we encounter Christ? And where do we encounter him? Where is the evidence of this resurrected Presence that Christians talk about? In friends. Even when we are not spending time with them, we are with them. It is they who make us realize the importance of walking the straight and narrow road, that is, living a simple life with the certainty of one thing necessary: we are loved. Their joys become ours. And our communion with each other is built on truth, on a certainty that our desires are not an illusion. This is why true friendship never ends. Our good will and affection for each other are founded on a steadfast look that hell itself cannot prevail against, a love so tremendous that it brings us together to walk in the same direction. Even when there are faults committed against each other, there is a look that looks beyond it, an intense and profound sympathy for each other’s fragility. In other words, the look is not limited to what a person has done, for that is looking at a person in a fragmented way, but with affection for the other person’s life as a whole, a love for the person’s destiny. Because there is this love, the person changes and looks forward to that day when he is no longer tied to his childish ways but naked with his arms stretched in front of his God and the world (Jn. 21:18). Christ told his friend, “Feed my sheep. Tend my lambs. Feed my sheep.” In other words, love the Church even with her weaknesses. Love the people God has put in your lives.