I'll drink well water if I'm thirsty enough, but it's not my first choice. The same with tap water, and even that filtered stuff. I'm grateful to a company willing to take water that starts out bad and purify it before selling it to me, but why buy a product that had to be altered? Give me some of that bottled spring water, the stuff that bubbles up from the ground like laughter and flows with the sparkle of the sun. Water the way God made it.

Well water? Ugh. It sits in a hole. It tastes like you're sucking on a door knob.

I realize Jacob didn't have much choice. There wasn't much water to choose from when he traveled to Samaria. The well was already there when he stumbled on it. (We're not sure exactly when, but in the vicinity of 1500 to 1000 BC. The well was older than that.) Local shepherds let their sheep drink from it. Then they rolled a stone over it to protect the source (Genesis 29:1-3). It was there that Jacob met his cousin Rachel and stole his first kiss. Jacob married Rachel and her sister Leah, both of whom bore him children, as did their maids Bilhah and Zilpah. Rachel became the mother of the patriarch Joseph. They all drank of the same well.

To that very well, many hundreds of years later, at noon one day, came a woman of Samaria, whose name we do not know (John 4:5-42). A lone figure sat nearby, tired from his journey, who had no bucket and needed help getting a drink. It was, of course, Jesus, and a remarkable conversation ensued. He asked her for a drink, but he offered one as well. Not cruddy well water. Living water. Spring water. "Where do you get that?" she wondered.

Jesus is the source of living water. It springs up within those who believe in him. But before he offered it to her, he revealed what she really thirsted for. She has had five husbands. (What is it about multiple partners at this well?) She has been thirsting for a satisfaction that life has not offered her. The woman found in Jesus someone who knew her, so he permitted her to know him. "I know that Messiah is coming," she said. "I am," he replied, using the very title God pronounced to Moses at the burning bush.

The woman changes. At the beginning of the story she seeks well water. At the end she receives living water. And there's more. She then goes to the city to tell everyone she suspects she's found the Messiah. She has changed from thirsty woman to believer to evangelist.

She is a Samaritan. The friends of Jesus did not hobnob with Samaritans. When he revealed himself to this woman, when a Samaritan woman became a believer, Jesus announced that he is exactly what she proclaims him to be at the story's close, "the savior of the world" - of the world, not just of a few.

No wonder this passage has earned its place in the Lenten preparation of catechumens and faithful. Sometime between the fifth and the seventh century this text gained a regular spot in the Roman liturgy a few weeks before Easter. It's easy to see why. Catechumens change, too. They thirst for the living water that will bring satisfaction to their spiritual life. They believe in Christ, who will lead them to the waters of Baptism. There they will find refreshment. And there they will find mission. Like the woman at the well, after they meet Christ at the water, they become evangelists, proclaiming the good news to all they meet.

The faithful who hear this passage turn to the woman of Samaria and to the catechumen for inspiration. In them we find an example of the spiritual life. In this Lenten desert we become more aware of our thirsts. We accept spiritual disciplines which help us drink from the living water of Jesus Christ.

The earliest liturgical book we know of, the Didache (c. 100 AD), specifies how to baptize. Use living water, it says, if at all possible. Preferably not a well. Go to a spring to ritualize Baptism. There you'll get the idea of what this sacrament offers. When we drink from the spring of Christ - in the scriptures, in the community, in the Eucharist - we will discover living water within, which never runs dry, delightful to taste.

Father Paul Turner is pastor of St. John Francis Regis Parish,Kansas City.