Video Transcript
Edmund: If you were to meet Jesus in person in your everyday life, how would you react? What would happen?
Emily: So, if I saw Jesus, I’d be thinking “Wait, what is He doing here?” and my next thought would probably be “Oh WOW, He’s here. Jesus is seeing ME here.”
Edmund: Jesus has a similar encounter with a woman from Samaria at a well. Jesus, a Jew, breaks social conventions by asking this woman for a drink from the well. Jews and Samaritans weren’t supposed to use anything in common. Plus, this woman was going to this well during the least crowded time of day. She had her reasons that she didn’t want to run into anyone.
Emily: Jesus says something interesting to the woman. He says: “If you knew the gift of God who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Edmund: Man, there’s so much to unpack here. I love this. Do you know the significance of wells in Scripture?
Emily: In Scripture, wells were not just sources of water but had deeper spiritual symbolism. They signify God’s provision for His beloved people, providing a pure drinking source. And they symbolize spiritual nourishment and communal harmony.
Edmund: So are there any “places” we can go to experience God like this today?
Emily: The Catechism explains that we can find wellsprings in Christian prayer when we meditate and treasure in our hearts the events and words of God.
Edmund: It then makes sense that the places we can meet Jesus—who is waiting at the well—would be Scripture, the Liturgy, Sacraments, and anywhere we invite Jesus into our present moment.
Emily: It’s like Jesus is always there waiting for us to show up, like the Samaritan woman. And not just to show up passively, but to realize that Jesus wants us to come with all our desires and needs and challenges and joys, and speak with Him.
Edmund: Yeah, we’re all thirsting for something. We all go to different places for our needs, our desires, and our thirsts. But whether we know it or not, what we REALLY desire is God. Only He can fully satisfy our thirsts.
Emily: And it goes so much deeper than that. In prayer, we are invited into a covenant relationship with God. And God wants to not just quench our thirst, but make living water spring up out of us. What is this living water? The Holy Spirit. The gift of prayer finds its wellsprings; its deep pools of satisfying grace and love, in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Edmund: This means that prayer, which is our relationship with God, isn’t just about being at the right place at the right time, or saying the right things. But it’s about an encounter with a person who fills us with life, love, and grace— like living water.
Emily: I remember that Jesus says later to the woman, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but 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 4:13-14).
Edmund: The Catechism says in paragraph 2652: “The Holy Spirit is the living water welling up to eternal life in the heart that prays. It is he who teaches us to accept it at its source: Christ. Indeed in the Christian life there are several wellsprings where Christ awaits us to enable us to drink of the Holy Spirit.”
Emily: So we can make little “wells” in our homes. We can make a place of prayer—like a prayer corner—filled with sacred images, Scripture, and icons, to be with Jesus in private. But our private prayer finds its highest expression and fulfillment in the Liturgy, when we join our community in the Church and are literally united with Jesus in the Eucharist.
Edmund: Prayer is individual and private, but it is also a communal act. We have our own private prayer with Jesus, but we also pray within the context of the entire Church. Prayer is done WITH the Body of Christ, IN the Church, and we enter into the mystery of Jesus’ life through the Sacraments.
Emily: AND we pray with all the members of the Body of Christ on earth AND the Saints in heaven. This is why we say we pray with a “great cloud of witnesses”.
Edmund: Together with the whole family of the Church, we approach the Father as His own dear children in His Son, through the Holy Spirit. We all bring our thirsts to God – our wants, our needs, our petitions, everything. Prayer isn’t just saying a few words. Prayer is about meeting Jesus where He encounters us personally and meets our thirst with living water that is life with Him.
Emily: This is the gift of prayer. And the gift of prayer finds its wellsprings in the Holy Spirit and the Church.
