5th Sunday of Pascha; Samaritan Woman

Christ is risen.

So the gospel that we heard last week and the gospel we hear this week have a very close relationship in terms of pointing the way to salvation. Last week, we heard about the paralytic by the pool of Siloam, and it's very fascinating because the pool of Siloam had five porches. It was also the pool where the sacrifices, after being slain, were washed. And here, there was this long tradition—a living tradition, meaning that it was actually alive and producing phenomena—of the water stirring from time to time. And the first person who stepped into the water would be healed. As a result of this reality, there was a multitude of people, and the paralytic was near the pool. The remarkable thing about him is that he was a paralytic, and here he is at the side of the pool. How is he going to get into the water? Only the first one, by the way, was healed. And so he had this profound difficulty.

Of course, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, filled with love and mercy and kindness, came to this paralytic and told him to take up his bed and walk. And what is the spiritual message of this account is that our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of the hopes of the Jewish people and all the hopes of those who yearned for peace and entry into the presence of God. The message, though, is that in the old covenant, and with the Jews of that time who had not come to know and accept our Lord, the grace was not everywhere present and filling all things, as we say. It manifested itself from time to time, and in a sense, and certainly not equally, but from time to time. And our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, of course, is perfect God and perfect man, and he is the fulfillment of the yearning and the mystery of salvation. And so his power is accessible to us not from time to time, but at all times, as we approach him in love and humility. And so there is a contrast, as it were, between grace in the old covenant at that time and grace which is being revealed through our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And today we hear about the Samaritan woman at the well. That's a very, very beautiful image. And here there's the well of Jacob, Jacob's well, which is considered to be a holy well, and all of the Israelites surrounding that area would come to Jacob's well and draw water. Matushka and I had the great privilege and honor to go to Jacob's well at one point many years ago. And it's a very deep well. When the monk that was there attending the well invited us to draw water, we dropped the bucket down in this pulley one, about 50 feet down. I don't know what the relevance of that is other than in terms of the spiritual message, but nevertheless, it was an amazing thing for us to witness and then draw up the bucket and drink from the water.

So we have the Samaritan woman. At the well, the Jews would come in the morning and particularly in the afternoon and the evening, and the reason is the sun is very, very hot there, and so it's difficult to come midday. But the Samaritans came midday because they were not welcomed by the Jews. There was a conflict between them, and so they would come midday in the heat of the sun. And when this Samaritan woman came to the well, she encountered our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and he greeted her and spoke to her. He spoke to her and addressed her about living water, and she asked for that water. And then he revealed to her that she had five husbands, and the last of these five wasn't even her husband. And what he was doing is he was revealing, one, that she lived in sin and fornication. And so if she had been associated with the Jews, she would have been stoned. She would not have been able to live in fornication, and so she would have been stoned. And that's obviously another reason why they came in midday, to avoid any conflict.

The question, of course, is who are the Samaritans? And the Samaritans actually were Jews who had been deported by the Assyrians. They had been driven from their homeland up into the northern provinces and so on, and lived among pagans. They did, however, remarkably preserve certain elements of their previous Jewish faith. They had the Torah, the five books of Moses, and they also remembered and were able to build a temple. They built a temple of their own, and with the five books of Moses, they had knowledge of the ritual, the way the services of that time were celebrated. But they never were reunited with the Jews. And so basically, what happens is that they became what we would call today schismatics because they didn't reunite when they came back near Israel. They didn't reunite with the Jews, and they had their own liturgy and so on, and they were schismatics in that sense.

And so what is happening is that the Samaritan woman, who is of these schismatic groups—and a schismatic group obviously didn't keep the morality and the law of the Jews—and so our Savior, when he comes to her, he reveals her condition, reveals to her that they are separated from the church. And he does it in such a way that he reveals a profound, profound compassion. It's an amazing thing because what he is giving her is, one, he opens up what her circumstances are and her living in fornication on the one hand, but he does it in such a way that he causes her to desire to repent. His love, his compassion on her—he is a Jew, remember. And so what she's hearing from our Savior as a Jew is very different than what the tradition was. And he basically leads her through this process of repentance and realization that he is the Messiah that they were waiting for, which is a very, very beautiful thing. And then he says at the end, "No longer will they worship in this place, nor will they worship in the mountain." No longer will they worship in Israel nor in the mountain, Mount Gerizim, but they will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. And basically what he's doing is he's really establishing in his words the church. This is a message about the... it's a, you might say, a prophetic statement of the church, which we know is the body of Christ.

And so we, brothers and sisters in Christ our God, we are the church. And what's fascinating about this parable, or historical account, is that it really speaks to contemporary circumstances in our religious society. Many years ago, I was at a conference in Canada, and I was with a few other priests, and we were speaking with Metropolitan Vitaly. Obviously, you don't know him, but he was a really amazing man and had led thousands of people out of Soviet Russia, being pursued by the communists. And so he was just an amazing man. He was brilliant and loving and a tremendous pastor. So anyway, in the conversation, the question was, what was the status of the Roman Catholics? And he explained that in his opinion, the Roman Catholics were really a re-manifestation of the Judaic tradition. So how is that? And basically, he explained, because what they've done is they've turned the faith into a system of laws. And this system of laws, yes, it's in the name of Christ, but it's actually a system of laws. I remember there was a shrine here, and they had a series of steps on it, certainly was 25 or 30, and there was a statue of the Virgin Mary and a little sign said, "If you climb these steps on your knees, you will receive so many years out of release from purgatory." So it's this whole system, almost an academic system. And he said, "And that's what Judaism is, a system of laws, not a system of compassion and forgiveness." And that was a very telling and very beautiful statement.

And so here we are in the modern era. And so I'm going to believe that Metropolitan Vitaly was right, not with hostility toward Roman Catholics, with love, but just with understanding. The great schism led to a change in the way they manifested the faith, and that change was a very serious change that affected spirituality. And so what happened, of course, is that after the great schism, then later it was the Reformation. And in the Reformation, obviously, people who had previously been Roman Catholic were struggling with this oppression of legalism, and they grabbed hold of the gospel. They made the gospel, the Bible, we should say, the center of their faith. And if you reflect on that, it really looks just like what the Samaritans did, because they didn't go back into communion with the Holy Church. And what did they do? They divided into, some people say, thousands of different sects and denominations. And how can the one true faith of the gospel of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ be divided up into thousands of denominations that disagree with one another? By the way, if they didn't disagree, they would unite. It seems very obvious.

So we have this amazing contrast. And I'm thinking, "Well, what does that have to do with us?" And what it has to do with us, brothers and sisters in Christ our God, miraculously, we are in the church. And insofar as we remain faithful, we are the church. And even in sinfulness and in our weakness, we are still the church. And when we fall away, we're not subject to stoning and death. We are given the mercy and the love and the compassion of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And thankfully, because none of us can stand here and say that we are of pure heart and a pure heritage. We are all sinful, and God has given us his mercies. And on the largest scale, it's amazing how the window that we have to look through the teachings of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

May God bless you this day and raise you up and increase your faith. And I know we're not like the Samaritan woman exactly, but may we understand and receive the forgiveness and the love of God throughout all of our life. Also, for those of you who are blessed to be mothers, happy Mother's Day. And may God bless you and keep you strong and faithful. And give very, very serious consideration to your children because the spirit of darkness is truly remarkable. And through the internet and through the cell phones and through all of these various platforms, children are relating to things that are immoral, and not only are they immoral, they are absolutely destructive. And they actually can lead to schizophrenia and psychosis. Because when a person relates to an image which does not have life, it does not have love, it does not have energy, when that person does that, if you do that enough, you are going to create that energy. You're going to have a fracture in your mind and your heart, and you're going to create the energy that that dead image which you're seeing would have if it were a living being. And that kind of fracture leads to very deep problems and schizophrenia and psychosis.

So may God protect all of our mothers and all of our fathers and all of our brothers and all of our sisters and help us to understand what we must do to preserve our faith and our holy church. In the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit.