Jesus Speaking with the Samaritan Woman at the Well
Basilica di St. Apollinare Nuovo Ravenna, 6th c.
Father Vasilios Argyriadis
Resurrection is today's Gospel passage. For three reasons. The first has to do with the gospel itself, from where we heard the reading. The gospel of John (which we read throughout the post-Easter period) has an essential difference in relation to the other three gospels: while in them, the Kingdom of God is revealed in stages, culminating with the entry into Jerusalem and sealed with the Passion and the Resurrection, in the Gospel of John the Kingdom of God is present and established already from the beginning. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus gradually sows the Kingdom of God and the Resurrection sprouts after the Crucifixion. In the fourth gospel, however, the Kingdom of God is already from the beginning a canonical tree, which casts a shadow over the entire gospel. Christ is the Risen Christ in every account of John. That is why we see in today's passage Jesus saying to his disciples: "You say that the harvest time is coming. I'm telling you it's already here . " "The time is coming and now is," he had said earlier to the Samaritan woman. The Kingdom of God is coming but it is already here, the Resurrection is in progress.
Of course, one might reasonably ask, "How can we say that the passage is 'resurrectionary', since it does not refer to any appearance of the resurrected Jesus?" » . This question is answered by the second of the three reasons we mentioned at the beginning, and which has to do with the content of what we heard. The passage is resurrected by the words that Christ himself says to the Samaritan woman in front of Jacob's well: "Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again; whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall not thirst in the eternal; but the water that I give him is born in him a source of water that is changed into eternal life" . The subtle point that makes our passage resurrectable is not the comparison between Jesus and Jacob—"Are you greater than our father Jacob?" — but the reference to the "spring of water of another" , which settles inside man. "Fountain of pure water" means clean water that springs up through man. And this is something that presupposes the Resurrection. Without her, it cannot happen. But to understand this, we should think about what was the state of man before the coming of Christ.
The Israelite people, the people of God, had the Mosaic law as their guide. It was what God had given to His people to stay close to His will, to walk in the way of His commandments. But this was something external, a law given from outside, which the people (and each person) struggled to make their property and apply in their lives, without much success most of the time. Because man's inner will and God's outer commands come into conflict and man fights to be able to harmonize with God's will. The apostle Paul describes it beautifully: "I want to do good, but I do not find the strength to do it... my action is determined by the sin that has enthroned in me" (Rom. 7,18 and 20). Before the work of Christ, this conflict was absolute within us. In his struggle with God's commandments, man had his own opponent. He drank the water of God's commandments, but he remained in it without thirst and had to drink again, as was done with the water from Jacob's well. However, Christ with his saving work (from the incarnation to His ascension) built a new self for man. He became the first man for whom the commandments of God were not only an external imperative, but also a deep internal satisfaction. And what He Himself was, He left us not only as a model of life, but also as eating and drinking: we partake of Christ to change ourselves, so that the commandments of God may now become not just external water that we drink and drink again, but an internal source which springs up from within us and becomes a torrent, spreads around and waters everything. Without the Resurrection, the new self would not be possible within us. Because the last and most powerful aspect of sin that was enthroned in us, the "last enemy" (1 Cor. 15:25) was death. Defeating death, the victory is complete. And so we partake not only of the Body and Blood of God incarnate, but also of the Risen Man. We commune with the whole God-Man, who with his Ascension made the earth heaven and the heaven earth. Now, if we want it, if we follow His own new way - "ἐντολὴν καινὴν διδομι ὑμῖν..." (John 13:34) - we can have a self that does not fight against God's commandments, nor simply walks along with difficulty them; we can have a self, from which the will of God springs forth from within. This is why God's word to the Samaritan woman presupposes the Resurrection. The "water of life" is "in eternal life" .
After the Resurrection of Christ, the conflict of our inner will with the outer commands of God, while still existing, is no longer absolute. Another self is a given on the horizon of our possibilities. It is not unconditional, nor easy. The Resurrection of Christ did not automatically silence the enthroned sin within us. He did not automatically inaugurate within each of us another self (to do so would violate our freedom). We have to choose him and it is not easy. But he is present and intoxicated. Walking in the footsteps of Jesus, embracing His commandments, making His cross our life (trouble and sacrifice for those around us), partaking of His Body and Blood, this is how the other self is born in us. Not another personality - our special idioms are not lost - but another self as a "spring of water of another" .
There is a third reason that makes today's cut resurrectable. It is the resurrection that takes place in the life of the Samaritan woman. That woman was cut off from her village community. What does this look like? From the fact that he goes to the well to get water at noon — "it was the sixth . " Instead of going with the other women in the morning, as was her custom, she goes alone at an inopportune time, in the meridian sun. She doesn't want to be seen, nor does she want to see them. It is detached because it has a present tense and a past tense ("because you have had five men, and the one you have now is not your husband" ). The community of her village certainly does not see her well, she is on the sidelines. But this, for a person of that time, implies a death. The man who had no place in the body of other men was a dead man. And Christ resurrects her. He makes her His witness: the Samaritan woman runs and alerts her fellow villagers, becoming the bearer of the news of the new source. Another self begins to emerge within her. And as we know from the tradition of the Church, she later reaches "the measure of the age of Christ's crew" (Eph. 4:13): the anonymous Samaritan woman becomes the named Saint Photini, a co-apostle, that is, a person like "another's source of water" .
In three ways today's gospel passage is a resurrection passage. But, in one way it can become our own life, resurrection life: to let the Lord establish in us a new self. To follow His example, to make His commandments our life and to become at every opportunity united and united with Him in the cup of the Holy Eucharist. And He will claim us with the gift of internal satisfaction in His will: to follow Him without violence, without resistance, with joy and love for everyone and everything. Closely, with another self, like clear water that springs from the depths of our hearts.
