to be Samaritan & find Jesus

Having come to the well by faith, the Samaritan woman beheld Thee, the Water of Wisdom, of which she drank lavishly, and inherited the kingdom on high, where her praises are sung eternally.

source: archangelsbooks.com

We are still singing Christ is Risen throughout the Divine Liturgy, and last Sunday was the Gospel of the Samaritan Woman. It is a long Gospel, and Father sings it in two languages. I pray that those who do not speak both languages will use the time to meditate on the Gospel's meaning when Father is singing in the language they don't understand.

Read the passage I added below- what do you focus on? Do you focus on Christ's boldness and compassion, talking to a woman and speaking truth to her? Do you focus on her isolation, coming to the well when she knows that no other women will be about? Do you focus on the concepts of living water? Do you focus on Christ's relationships with His disciples? Do you focus in the woman's conversion and her later evangelization of her townspeople? Do you remember the story of Joseph and Jacob in the Old Testament?

I think about all these things and more, but last Sunday, I reflected primarily on the 'it is never too late' aspect of this Gospel. Because the woman was open to listening to Christ, she got over the isolating (as a Samaritan) and sinful (as a five times married woman now living with a man not her husband) life and is now remembered as a woman who brought many to Christ. Tradition says that she died a martyr along with her children. Heroic virtue is possible even after a life that is not so virtuous.  

 

 ⁴ Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

 ⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

 ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans)

 ¹⁰ 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.”

 ¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

 ¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ 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.”

 ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

 ¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

 ¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

   Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

 ¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

   ²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

 ²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

 ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”  ²⁷ Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

 ²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

 ³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

 ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

 ³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”   ³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”  ³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers. ---Gospel of St John the Evangelist Chapter 4

 ⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”