Just at that moment the followers of Jesus, John and Peter, and the others, came back from the village with the food which they had bought. They were surprised to find their Master talking with a woman, but they said nothing.
The woman had come to the well to draw water, but in her interest in this wonderful stranger she forgot all about her errand. Leaving her water-jar she ran back to the village and said to everybody whom she met:
"Come with me and meet a man who told me everything I have done in all my life! Is not this man the Christ whom we are looking for?"
After the woman went away toward her home, the disciples urged Jesus to eat some of the food which they had brought. A little while before Jesus had been hungry, but now in talking with the woman and leading her mind to the truth, he had forgotten his own needs.
"I have food to eat," said he, "that you know nothing of."
They looked at each other and said:
"Can it be that someone has brought him something to eat?"
But Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of my Father who sent me into the world, and to finish the work that he gave me to do. Do you say that there are four months before the harvest time will come? I tell you to look on the fields, and find them already white for the harvest. You shall reap and gain a rich harvest, gathering grain for everlasting life."
Jesus meant that this woman, bad though she may have been before, was now eager to hear his words and to come to God. So his disciples would soon find the hearts of men everywhere, like a field of ripe grain, ready to be won and to be saved.
Soon the woman came back to the well with many of her people. They all asked Jesus to come to their village and teach them. He went to the town of Sychar and stayed there two days, talking to the people about the Kingdom of God and showing them how they might enter into it. Many of the people in that place and near it believed in Jesus as the Christ, the King sent from God, and they said: