First Reading

First reading Reading from the book of Exodus

First Reading

Exodus 17:3-7

In those days, the people, tormented by thirst, went to complain against Moses, saying: “Did you make us come out of Egypt to let us, our children, and our livestock die of thirst?” Moses cried out to the Lord and said: “What can I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me.” The Lord replied to Moses: “Pass before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there before you on the rock in Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.”

Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called that place Massah and Meribah, because of the rebellion of the children of Israel and because they had tested the Lord, saying: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

Second reading

Reading from the letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Brothers and sisters: Since we have been justified by faith, let us hold fast to peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For indeed, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly at the appointed time.

Scarcely will anyone die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person someone might dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Gospel

Reading from the holy Gospel according to Saint John

John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

At that time, Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, his children, and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give him will never thirst; the water I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water. I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming (the one called the Christ); when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”

Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me everything I have done.’ When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”