"One of my Dominican brothers presents this story as the basic model or paradigm of evangelization for the church. He identifies four stages in it, arguing that all of them are important and that their order is important to.

In a somewhat provocative way, but I think it's a useful provocation. He calls the first stage flirting, a conversation between a woman and a man who are both alone. Jesus takes hold of the discussion and transforms it gradually through his questions, into a meditation on human happiness and fulfillment. For a long time, however, ambiguity persists. One gets the impression that the same words mean different things to Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

It is only when she seems won over by Jesus, that is when she says to him 'sir, give me some of that water so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water'. Only at that point does Jesus initiate stage two. The Samaritan woman's confrontation with the truth. Jesus says, go and call your husband and come back here.

And she answers, honestly, I have no husband. To which he replies, you are right to say I have no husband, for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband.

Through this painful operation, the Samaritan woman slowly begins to understand that the man she has met is by no means like the others, that this time, unlike what it might have seemed at the beginning. This man is not just flirting. For now she is saying to him, I see that you are a prophet, sir.

This then leads to stage three, a short catechesis, a conversation about true worship that leads Jesus to reveal his identity. She says to him, I know that the Messiah, this is Christ, is coming. To which he replies, I who am speaking to you, I am he.


The whole story is then finally crowned by stage four, the woman's return to the village from which she came.

Where she feels driven to share with the other inhabitants what has happened to her. And we are told many Samaritans of that town had believed in him. On the strength of the woman's testimony.

We said that the stages and the order are important. First, there is the encounter. Jesus asks for help from her, but as his question leaves her perplexed and makes her want to ask her questions, he willingly answers and thereby awakens in her a desire to know more.

The first stage of evangelization in this model, then, is awakening desire in those who hear us. Then comes the phase that we here would like to avoid. Facing the brokenness and weakness of our interlocutor. Since we to know how much we need God's mercy. Yet according to this model, it is necessary to do just that, not in order to condemn, but in order to make the encounter more real and the desire to, for help, more insistent.

Only then are we called in this model to share what we have to teach. And then finally, the person evangelist must go out to share what he or she has received with others. This model of evangelization only concludes with that phase, not with the catechesis.

We might gain even more insight from this gospel text. If we look at it in another way, using the idea of the gaze of Jesus. This is an idea much beloved of Pope Francis, which he uses in many places, including the place I'm going to use today. The end of the chapter on the theology of Creation in Laudato Si.

There he identifies four aspects of the gaze of Jesus, each of which we can apply to his encounter with the Samaritan woman.

Firstly, the gaze of Jesus places us in relation with God the Father, to whom we are of great importance. As the Gospel of Matthew attests, look at the birds of the sky. Jesus says they do not so or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?"

Encore une fois, le problème est que cette sœur dominicaine invoque une image, le "flirt" qui, même s'il n'est pas pratiqué par le Christ, reste scandaleux car il jette le doute et que je ne suis pas sûr que le fidèle va se plonger dans l'intervention de la dominicaine pour saisir que le Christ

1. Adopte une attitude qui de l'extérieur ressemble à du flirt
2. Adopte une attitude qui est perçue par la Samaritaine comme un flirt
3. Adopte une attitude qui, du côté du Christ, n'est pas du flirt.

Je vous signale au passage que Vatican News sont eux-mêmes en pleine confusion :

"Dans le cadre d’une rencontre internationale qui a fait salle comble, la religieuse a évoqué la conversation intime entre Jésus et la Samaritaine. Une interaction qui s'est déroulée au moment le plus chaud de la journée, près d'un puits, dans le contexte d’une «situation familiale fragile et précaire», comme cela a été révélé par la suite. La conversation s'est déroulée en plusieurs étapes, analysées par la religieuse à la lumière des méditations du père dominicain Michael Paluch. La première approche a été qualifiée, de manière «utilement provocatrice», de «flirt»: une conversation entre un homme et une femme seuls, empreinte d'une ambiguïté initiale, jusqu’à ce que Jésus la confronte à la vérité: «Appelle ton mari». La femme répondit en toute honnêteté: «Je n’ai pas de mari». Ce à quoi il répliqua: «Tu as bien dit: “Je n’ai pas de mari”, en effet tu as eu cinq maris et celui que tu as maintenant n’est pas ton mari». À partir de là, la Samaritaine comprit qu’elle se trouvait face à un prophète et ressentit enfin le besoin de raconter aux autres habitants de son village ce qui lui est arrivé."

Enfin, je me permets de vous signaler que l'intervention de la religieuse ne relève pas de l'infaillibilité pontificale. On a parfois l'impression que vous pensez commettre un péché si vous n'allez pas dans le sens de toute prise de parole prise dans l'enceinte du Vatican...

     

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