Sunday 8 March 2026
The gospel today was the Woman at the Well, from John 4:5-42.
We studied this passage during the RCIA, exactly a year ago, and I remember coming to understand something of its importance. But hearing it again today, and listening to reflections from my own priest, and others online and elsewhere, I started grasping other things.
One theme stuck with me this time. The idea that this woman, encountering Jesus at the well, represented someone who was chasing something that would never satisfy her.
After all, she had been married five times and was with a sixth man who was not her husband. It was hard not to see similarities between this woman 2000 years ago, and modern men and women today, seeking something, but unsure of what. But all the time switching from one thing to another. One relationship to another. One idol to another.
It’s only when she encounters Christ that she sets off into the town to tell others, to evangelise, having now seen her true way of living.
When you place yourself in the story, you realise how similar your own faults are. Is it a sense of never being satisfied? Is it something close to always being busy, or working on a plan? Is it worrying about the future too much? Perhaps all of these things.
But I continue to be amazed by how relevant these stories remain. Not just in a theoretical sense. This encounter could take place today.