Jesus' Meeting with the Samaritan Woman (Jn 4:4-30.39-42)

A Reading in the Light of Paulo Freire's Method

Abstract

This article seeks to bring closer the liberating educational methodology of Freire with the liberating teaching of Jesus. Paulo Freire, with his methodology of liberating education and hope, teaches us how a person, through a process of liberating education, can awaken to a critical, free, and transformative awareness of their own history and the context in which they are deeply rooted. From this, the text of the evangelist John about Jesus' praxis in the dialogue with the Samaritan woman is revisited. To achieve this, bibliographic analysis methodology is employed, focusing on two works by Paulo Freire and on commentaries about the Gospel according to John. In this sense, an hermeneutical pathway was sought, whereby it is verified, through the perspective of the aforementioned and renowned educator in his methodology, that the Samaritan woman, in her deep dialogue with Jesus, discovered herself as if, through a social and cultural introjection of her history and context, the meaning and significance of her life, in order to impact the lives of their contemporaries, recognizing, in Jesus, that necessary element that invites everyone to follow the path of a liberating education, beyond the stereotypes that have been imposed on them. This article highlights this process and its outcome, corroborating with a whole methodology and its natural process.