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Dear Parish Faithful,
CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!
Referring back to yesterday's Paschal Meditation, we discovered that Jesus is the heavenly "Bridegroom" that fulfills the "types" of meetings and marriages that occurred in the Old Testament around a well (Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob and Rachel). This theme of the true "husband/bridegroom" emerges again in the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, when Christ asks her about her current husband. After letting her know that this, her sixth husband, was not truly her husband (Jn. 4:17-18), Christ will speak to her of the true worship of God. But if we pause on this someone awkward part of their dialogue - the personal life history of the woman of Samaria - perhaps we can uncover the Lord's motives in exposing her irregular marital history. In again turning to Brendan Byrne from his commentary on St. John's Gospel - Life Abounding - we find a very nuanced and balanced approach, which shifts away from moral condemnation, to the deeper issues of one's longings in life:
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""Feminist exegesis has rightly taken male interpreters to task for letting their imagination run riot in detailed reconstruction of the woman's sinful way of life. On the one hand, it seems impossible to avoid all sense of scrutiny of her way of life - albeit with Jesus as conversation partner rather than master and judge. Dorothy Lee observes, "These verses function, not to expose moral guilt, but to uncover the pain of the woman's life in her relationships with men." True, but such pain in human relationships is perhaps a symptom of the deeper "thirst" that Jesus is attempting to uncover, a longing for "life" that only the experience of intimacy with the divine can give. It is hard to eliminate from the conversation all sense of a need for conversion from a way of life that is to some degree morally suspect. The woman's dismissive disclaimer, "I have no husband" (v. 17a), has expressed the truth (v. 17b-18). She has had five husbands and, unsuccessful in all relationships, is ironically now free to be "wooed" and brought to the truth of Jesus."
From Life Abounding by Brendan Byrne, p. 84.
