Saint Teresa of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman from the Gospel of John (John 4:1-42)
P. Vojtěch of St. Hedwig, OCD
Nearly everyone of us has a “favorite” scene from the Gospels that is more significant than others, speaks to them more, and engages them, simply: it is “theirs.”
The same was true in the lives of the saints: they too had “their” biblical passages that profoundly resonated within their souls. Not that they overlooked other pericopes and the entirety of the message of Scripture because of them, but those few texts were so important to them that they decisively influenced their entire lives: they provided a completely new, fundamental, and significant focus.
A typical example here can be the story from the life of Saint Anthony the Hermit, as recounted by Saint Bishop Athanasius: young Anthony, reflecting for some time on the life of poverty, one day enters a church where the Gospel is being read, in which the Lord says to the rich man: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor...” (Matt 19:21). Anthony is so captivated by this text that without delay he leaves the temple and gives away all his inheritance...1 Thus begins his eremitic life, which will one day make him “the father of all monks.”
In the life of Saint Teresa of Jesus, we would undoubtedly find more such scenes from the Gospel or generally biblical passages that had a fundamental meaning for her subsequent life. However, let us observe only one here: the scene from the Gospel of John, where Jesus converses with the Samaritan woman. Let us attempt to penetrate into the mystery of what this story truly meant for Teresa by contemplating the echoes of this New Testament text in the writings of the saint.
An Image in Teresa's Room
First of all, it should begin with the fact that the mentioned scene has such importance for the future reformer of Carmel simply because Teresa had it before her eyes since her early childhood. She herself mentions it in the Book of Life:
“How many times I recalled the living water that the Lord spoke of to the Samaritan woman! I greatly value this Gospel event, and that since childhood, so that without fully understanding what I was asking, I often asked the Lord to give me living water: In my room, I had a picture that depicted Jesus near the well, and beneath it was written: Domine, da mihi aquam!” (Life 30:19).2
Teresa had this image before her eyes since childhood, which is certainly very important: for a child is often characterized by an unconscious experience of reality, yet one that is emotionally much stronger and imaginatively deeper. Even here, in childhood, traits that will be typical of the saint of Avila throughout her life manifest: she lets herself be drawn into the Gospel scene she reflects on and identifies with the character conversing with Jesus. Scripture is always for Teresa alive; it is not mere historical narrative, but rather a constantly valid model that is re-presented in the lives of individual believers precisely when they meditate on it. Therefore, it is also very important for her to identify with the figure she contemplates, for it allows Teresa not to remain apart as a passive observer, but to utter her first very profound prayer: “Lord, give me water.”
It is also certainly not insignificant that here Teresa can identify with a female figure. As we go through the saint's writings, we find that other biblical figures who are very close to her are largely women: let us think only of Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, or the Canaanite woman.3
This is a striking evidence of the realism with which the saint reads the Holy Scripture as she subconsciously identifies with those who are closest to her.
However, what is typical for her is primarily that she is spontaneously led to prayer by the mentioned Gospel scene. As we will see further, this “pull to prayer” is entirely characteristic of Teresa: although she is still small at that time and the fact that the inscription under the picture is in Latin contributes to her not fully understanding it, she instinctively translates her contemplation over the image immediately into prayer, into a plea: Domine, da mihi aquam.
The narrative from her childhood would only be a sympathetic, yet fundamentally banal “flower” from the life of the saint, had it not been for the fact that after entering Carmel, Teresa did something that testifies to the exact opposite: she had this image transferred to the monastery of Incarnation and placed it in her cell! By that, she clearly expressed how important it was to her. After all, some of her texts also bear witness to the fact that she often meditated before it.4
The Symbolism of Water and Thirst
The meaning of the Gospel narrative about Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman and the prayer associated with it will be fully appreciated only when we realize what the symbolism of water and thirst clearly represents for Teresa.
Regarding water, the saint says that she “only needed to look at the fields, the water, or the flowers: these things reminded me of the Creator, stirred me, helped me to become collected, served me as a book…” (Life 9:5). Even more significant in this regard is the text we find in The Castle of the Soul: “Because I am ignorant and have little talent, I find nothing more suitable to explain certain spiritual matters than water, which I love very much; I have always paid it more attention than any other element” (4H 2:2).
That this is indeed the case and that water is one of Teresa's very favorite symbols is also evidenced by her “treatise on prayer” (cf. Life 11-22), where “water” represents God’s grace and “the way to water the garden” is the way of prayer.5
Regarding thirst, Teresa writes shortly, but more poignantly: “The expression thirst signifies for me a burning desire for something that one needs desperately, for without it, one would die” (C 19:8).
Thirst as a “burning desire” for something we urgently need for life, and water as “the grace of prayer,” thus become the key to a deeper understanding of Teresa's interpretation of the pericope about the Samaritan woman.
The Grace of Collecting Oneself
In the life of the reformer of Carmel, her own thirst, that is, a burning desire for God, meets the water of grace that the Lord offers and gives her.
Teresa beautifully discusses this in connection with the distractions that troubled her for years during prayer: “Some souls have such scattered thoughts, like horses without reins, which no one can stop (…) I have compassion for them, for they seem to me to be souls tormented by thirst (…) It happens that (…) they run out of strength, even when they are only a few steps from the source of living water, of which the Lord told the Samaritan woman that whoever drinks of it will never thirst again. How true are these words spoken by the Truth itself! The soul that drinks that water will never thirst for any earthly thing, but increasingly longs for things of the next life; it is incomparably different from natural thirst. How thirstily it longs for this thirst, for it understands its great value. Although it is very tormenting and exhausting, it still brings so much sweetness that it mitigates the burning by destroying its inclination towards earthly things and satisfying it with a desire for heavenly ones. This is one of the great graces that God can bestow upon the soul when He allows it to thirst so that it may want to drink this water more and more.” (C 19:2).
To drink from the water and thus quench this burning thirst means, for Teresa, to arrive at a state of collecting oneself, or expressed differently: to be able to dwell intimately with the one who alone is capable of quenching our thirst. When the saint prays: Domine, da mihi aquam, she primarily asks for the ability to live a life of deep prayer, in recollection, which ultimately means nothing else than living in proximity to Jesus and thereby in intimate communion with the Triune God.
The Ideal of Life in Cloister
However, for her to live in this way, Teresa needs the external conditions that would allow her to do so. She finds them after years of searching in a contemplative vocation as a nun living in cloister.
At the conclusion of the Book of Foundations, she expresses this again with reference to the Samaritan woman: “Whoever has not experienced it cannot believe that at each foundation we are flooded with an amazing joy when we are already in the cloister, which the worldly person cannot enter. Even when we love people very much, it is still a great comfort for us to remain alone. Sometimes it seems to me that with us it is like with fish. When they are caught from the river, they cannot live unless they return there. It is the same with souls that have learned to live in the streams of their Beloved. If they are caught away from the source by the nets of this world, they cannot live unless they return there. I see this in the sisters and I know it from my own experience. Sisters who often wish to go out among worldly people and entertain themselves with them, let them be afraid. They have not yet penetrated to the source of living water, of which the Lord spoke with the Samaritan woman. To them, the Bridegroom has hidden himself – and rightly so – because it was not enough for them to just be with Him. I fear this stems from two reasons: either they decided on this state solely for Him, or that even when they entered, they do not realize the great grace that God has given them with such a calling.” (Z 31:46).
That is precisely why Teresa establishes reformed Carmels: she wants the sisters to have the external conditions that facilitate their journey to the source of living water, to Christ. And she perceives the contemplative way of life in strict cloister as ideal for truly reaching this noble goal.
The Desert of Drought
However, even then, when one truly lives in recollection, their thirst does not completely disappear. On the contrary: as the soul grows, it must go through periods of drought, when on the one hand, the world does not attract it, but on the other hand, it cannot be fully satisfied even in prayer.6
Teresa powerfully expresses this in the sixth chamber of The Castle of the Soul: “Why must the soul still live separated from its Good? It experiences a strange loneliness, and the company of all earthly creatures would not be of any use to it, nor even, I believe, the heavenly beings, unless they are with the One it loves; it would rather torment it. It sees itself as if in the air, unable to rest on the ground or rise to heaven. It is on fire with thirst and cannot reach the water: an unbearable thirst that reaches such dimensions that it cannot be quenched except by the water of which the Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman. It wants nothing else and does not receive this.” (6H 11:5).7
The water referred to in the Gospel pericope is, for Teresa, the mystical union with God, which is a foretaste of a full union with Him in eternity in blessed contemplation. As long as a person does not even slightly taste this, they live their life painfully and as a form of purification.
Apostolic Orientation
Anyone who would imagine the cloistered life of the Discalced Carmelite nuns as closed off and unresponsive to their surroundings would be greatly mistaken. Something like that would also be perceived by Saint Teresa as self-serving and unproductive. In reality, she was aware that the contemplative life in Carmel cannot solely lead to personal growth of the individual, which at a certain moment on earth becomes constricting. On the contrary, it also penetrates outward, having a need to share and convey it further. The saint is even aware that even the very growth in holiness is related to the apostolate.
The Samaritan woman also here serves as a notable example for her, inspiring, even to a certain extent directly provoking: “I recall now that holy Samaritan woman, whom I have thought about many times (...): she leaves the Lord Himself so that her fellow townspeople can meet Him and benefit from it. (...) And for this great love, she deserved that they believe her, and she saw how much good our Lord accomplished in that village.
I think that one of the greatest comforts in this life is when one sees that, thanks to them, souls are advancing (...) Blessed are those to whom the Lord grants these graces. They must then serve Him even more.
That holy woman ran in some divine ecstasy and cried out in the streets (...) She had great humility, certainly, for when the Lord told her about her sins, she was not offended as is often the case today in a world that can hardly bear the truth, but replied that she must be a prophet. – In the end, they believed her, and many from the town went to meet the Lord.” (M 7:6).
A Loving Plea
We have seen that when Teresa reflects on the Samaritan woman, a thirst for God awakens within her, for that water which alone can satisfy all human desires, and therefore she asks Christ: Domine, da mihi aquam (“Lord, give me water”). In doing so, she longs for a life of recollection, for a cloistered life where one fully surrenders to God, where one must also go through periods of drought, when they are “torn” between heaven and earth, yet nonetheless happier than when they were fully immersed in earthly and worldly concerns. The water that this thirst draws them towards, however, also propels them to testify about Jesus, who gives it to them.
We too, inspired by Teresa's example, are encouraged to discover within ourselves the desire for the living God and therefore to ask Christ: “Lord, give me water.” And He will give it to us: the water that will lead us into silence and recollection, the water that will guide us through the desert of life despite periods of drought, the water that will open us to the possibility of testifying about Christ: some through their lives, others even with their words.
Domine, da mihi aquam.
