Today’s gospel is a story of baptism, and what baptism does for each of us. It’s a story of thirst and water, of longing and desire. It’s part one of a baptismal trilogy that continues next week and the week after. Three lessons about baptism, with three images: this week water, next week light, and the following week rising from the dead. But it all begins with being thirsty. Within each one of us is a deep yearning, what St. Augustine calls a restlessness, what some spiritual writers call a “holy longing.” Something eats at our hearts, a feeling of something missing, of being incomplete, a desire for something just beyond our vision. A thirst. The Samaritan woman in today’s gospel comes to the well thirsty. Each day she picks up her water jar, walks half a mile from her home in Sychar to Jacob’s well, and returns home with the jar full of water. Day after day. No matter how often she comes to the well, she is still thirsty the next day, and has to go to the well again. But as is often the case in John’s gospel, there are two levels of meaning here. Not only is the Samaritan woman physically thirsty, but she’s also spiritually thirsty. We find out she’s been married five times, and the man she is living with now is not her husband. In other words, she can’t seem to stay settled down. Her life is uneasy and unsettled. She goes from husband to husband, trying to ease her restlessness, trying to satisfy her longings, trying to quench her thirst. But no matter how many relationships she’s been in, she still feels the restlessness, the longing. She is still thirsty. And then one day she carries her jar to the well, and Jesus is there. Jesus knows she’s a Samaritan, he knows all about her five husbands, and still he offers her Living Water. “Everyone who drinks this water will never be thirsty again.” “The water I shall give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” This is what she’s been longing for. This is what we long for. Her story is our story. We spend our lives trying to quench our thirst by going after mirages in the desert— money, success, pleasure— but it is never enough. Even when we throw ourselves into service, helping those in need, taking care of our families, we still feel restless and unsettled. Like the Samaritan woman, we still thirst. Why is that? Theologian Karl Rahner puts it this way: “God loves us so much, he creates in us a desire that only he can fill.” Or in the words of St. Augustine, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” In other words, no single human experience can leave us fully satisfied. Only the infinite mystery of God’s Love can satisfy the longing, the restlessness, the thirst in our hearts. This is the Living Water that Christ offers to the Samaritan woman, the same water each of us received at our baptisms. This is the Living Water that catechumens are preparing to receive when they are baptized at the Easter Vigil. This weekend, all over the world, catechumens gather in their parishes for what is called the First Scrutiny. The Scrutinies, which take place on the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent,