Dr Garikai Madabo nSJ reflects on Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention for September
Intention: Let us pray for a just and sustainable management of water, a vital resource, so that everyone may have equal access to it.
Midday at Jacob’s Well. Jesus, a thirsty Jew, meets a local Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink. But there is a challenge at this well. “Sir, the well is deep, and you have no bucket” (John 4:11).
Today, the challenge is no longer that the well is deep or that the stranger has no bucket, as the Samaritan woman assumed. Most of our cities are equipped with sophisticated engineering systems that bring water to our doorsteps. We can now desalinate seawater, build mega-dams, pump water across deserts and drill boreholes deeper than Jacob ever dreamed. Water flows from our taps and sits bottled on supermarket shelves. While the woman thought the depth of the well was the problem, we know better.
We should also know that we ourselves are the problem. Self-centredness and greed make our hearts dry and shallow. Our capacity to love and to share falls short of what is needed if we are to show genuine concern for the strangers among us who thirst.
Thirst across boundaries
Despite having the means, we often lack the prudence and compassion to care for others. We fail to see their thirst across cultural boundaries, social divisions, economic privilege and unjust models of development. As a result, some enjoy privileged access to water while the rest of creation thirsts.
Imagine a model of development in which the walls of mega-dams become barriers that reserve water primarily for human use. In many cases, rivers no longer follow their natural course. Animals, forests and ecosystems downstream receive water only according to how it is regulated by those who control the dams. Let’s suppose they are considerate in their regulation, and leave it at that.
We can rightly appreciate the dams and pipelines that bring water to our homes. Yet access is often controlled by prepaid meters that cut off the poor. The water is there, but only those who can pay receive it.
The same logic applies in the supermarket: only those with money can obtain water. I once saw a “Customers Only” sign outside a shopping mall restroom while, nearby, an entire taxi rank depended on a single broken standpipe. Does this ring a bell?
We ourselves become the culprits when we fail to take seriously the thirst of the poor. Our Lord’s thirst finds one of its clearest expressions in informal settlements where water pipelines pass through to supply wealthier neighbourhoods without leaving a drop for those who cannot afford it.
Even where donor-funded organisations have installed communal taps or boreholes, the ratio of households to each water source is often far too high. Women and children queue for hours, sometimes from as early as 4am, and the little water available is often rationed because of scarcity.
Time, too, is rationed. When a single tap serves 200 families, children miss school and adults miss work simply to collect water. The consequences are subtle but devastating.
Denying Christ a drink
One wonders how these families survive, enduring long queues and broken taps. We should also think of undocumented migrants and people sleeping on our city pavements. Where do they find water to drink or to wash? What kind of water is available to them? When we deny them access to water, we deny Christ himself a drink.
This month, Pope Leo reminds us to share the well. Water is our common inheritance, entrusted to us by God for the benefit of all creation. Water is life, and access to it is a universal human right.
We have mastered the art of bringing water up from the well. We have yet to master the grace of sharing it justly. Our engineering has transformed Jacob’s Well and brought water to our doorsteps. Yet only grace can teach us to share it. This month, therefore, we pray for that grace: the grace to recognise Christ’s thirst in those who are excluded, and the courage to lower our bucket for them.
The water we keep will eventually leave us parched. Only the water we give becomes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (cf John 4:14).
- Pray with the Pope: Christ is Thirsty, Let’s Share a Drink - September 2, 2026
- Mass Readings: 6 September – 13 September, 2026 - September 2, 2026
- Pope: Never Judge God’s Work - September 1, 2026
