The Gospel of John is the Gospel dedicated to the theme of eternal life, and Jesus brought this knowledge to us in a metaphorical way when he met a Samaritan woman who was looking for water at Jacob's well in John 4:1-26. The eternal life is one of the most mysterious perceptions in the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus in the gospels when talking about eternal life always responded with evasions and comparisons, but from the explanation that he left us in John 17:3: "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God", we can say that eternal life is the worship of wisdom. Now there is the question of why Jesus calls the contemplative life, the meditation in the divine attributes of God, as eternal life, and that surely is because this spiritual life of man, once obtained, cannot be lost, that is why it is eternal.
And Jesus, when speaking with the Samaritan woman, in a metaphorical way tells us that the eternal life is that water that we have to obtain from God so as not to have spiritual thirst again. We all thirst for God and that thirst for God calls us to seek him, sooner or later.
This was the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, about one of the deepest mysteries of our Lord Jesus:
"The Samaritan woman said to him, ´You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?´
Jesus answered her, ´If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.´
´Sir,´ the woman said, ´you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?´
Jesus answered, ´Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.´" John 4:9-14.
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