Jesus said to her,
“Go call your husband and come back.”
The woman answered and said to him,
“I do not have a husband.”
Jesus answered her,
“You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’
For you have had five husbands,
and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true.”

The Samaritan woman asks Jesus for this living water, and He tells her to go get her husband. Why? Because He knows how she will respond. And she responds by saying, "I do not have a husband."

Why does she say this? She obviously has a man at home she calls a husband. For some reason, though, she cannot lie to Jesus. She feels drawn to tell Him the truth. Of course, there is also the possibility that she wants to hide her sin. She does not say, "My husband is not really my husband." She says, "I do not have a husband." Perhaps she is afraid that if her sin is discovered, she will not receive the living water. We often fear the same thing. We're so thirsty for Christ, for His forgiveness, His mercy, His love, but we tell ourselves that if He were to discover the truth of our sin, the depths to which we have sunk, He would never give it to us.

But Christ sees everything, just as He sees the true meaning in the Samaritan woman's statement. "You are right," He says, because she has had five husbands and she is living in adultery. He sees the truth and He tells her the truth, without sugarcoating anything. It is a difficult truth to accept, but it is the truth nonetheless. Notice that Christ does not say, "You are living in terrible sin and shall surely die." or "Yeah, you don't have one husband. You have five!" He doesn't mock her. He doesn't threaten her. Calmly and clearly, He states the truth. She is living in sin. She is living in sin, but she has spoken truthfully to Him about it.

Christ sees all that we do. He sees all of our sins, and yet we get so worried about examining our conscience and confessing our sins to Him, as if He doesn't already know. It's like we think Jesus is fooled by the act we put on. I love that in some of the hardest confessions of my life for me, when I was confessing sins for which I was sure I deserved hell, the priest has shown absolutely no shock. Sometimes, priests look bored. Other times, I've even got chuckles at my frantic confession. I love this because I think it's how Jesus responds. He's not shocked by our confessions. He's been there the entire time. He's known from all time exactly how each of us would disappoint Him. He watches us sin, begging us not to sin even as we do so, and then He patiently waits for us to come to Him. We walk into the confessional often in the same way that a little kid shuffles into the living room where their dad's waiting, head down, afraid of how He'll respond. We mumble out, "I have sinned," and God calmly replies, "I know." We start the Act of Contrition, sorrow weighing on our heart, "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you," and God's response is to wrap us in His arms and say, "Oh my child, I know."

I'm praying for you!

:)