At the well

In a couple hours, since our parish always uses the Gospel reading for the RCIA scrutinies, I am going to hear the gospel that illustrates in a striking and poignant way God's eagerness to meet us where we are. It is easy for us to not grasp the full implications of Jesus speaking this Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in the afternoon, yet it is wondrous on several levels:

•  Just try to imagine what it would be like if Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu each accidentally encountered each other in some chance meeting.  Except Jews and Samaritans were not merely enemies, the former disdained the latter for discarding the purity of the covenant, and the latter had lived under centuries of this attitude. 
• Suppose a socialite wife ran into a known prostitute.  Or, maybe better yet, what if a devoted father finds himself in the grocery store checkout line with a child molester for whom he's just read a predator notification he got in the mail, maybe late at night when the latter was shopping in the faint hope of being able to avoid people.
• How often do we disregard others when we are on our way somewhere that we need to reach at a specific time, and see someone experiencing an inconvenience?

All of these elements are at play in this story, yet Jesus met this scandalous woman exactly where she was, engaged her in a way that overcame both the longstanding cultural hatred between them and her shame, and stayed there for two days despite the fact that he was on his way somewhere else.

It is likely that the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus would never convey God's love for us without these examples from Jesus' life and ministry to illustrate and underscore the reason for them.