Returning from Judea to Galilee, Jesus Christ with His disciples passed through the country of the Samaritans, past a city called Sychar(according to the ancient name of Shechem). In front of the city on the south side was a well dug, according to legend, by Patriarch Jacob.

Jesus Christ, tired from the journey, sat down to rest by the well. It was noon time, and His disciples went to the city to buy food there.

At this time, a Samaritan woman comes to the well from the city for water.

Jesus Christ says to her: "Give Me a drink."

These words of the Savior greatly surprised the Samaritan woman. She said: "How is it You, a Jew, ask me to drink from me, Samaritan women? After all, the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans."

The Lord told her: “If you knew the gift of God (that is, the great mercy of God that God sent you in this meeting), and Who says to you: give Me a drink; then you yourself would ask Him, and He gave you living water."

Jacob's Well Today

The Savior called living water His Divine Teaching. Because, just as water saves a thirsty person from death, so His Divine teaching saves a person from eternal death and leads to eternal blissful life. And the Samaritan woman thought that He was talking about ordinary spring water, which they called “living” water.

The woman asked him in surprise: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where did you get living water from? and his cattle?"

Jesus Christ answered her: "Whoever drinks this water will thirst again (that is, he will be thirsty again); but whoever drinks the water that I will give, he will not thirst forever. Because the water that I ladies, it will become a spring of water springing up into eternal life."

But the Samaritan woman did not understand these words of the Savior, and said: "Lord, give me this water, so that I do not have thirst and do not come here to draw."

Jesus Christ, wanting the Samaritan woman to understand what He was talking about, first told her to call her husband to Him, He said: "Go, call your husband and come here."

The woman said, "I don't have a husband."

Then Jesus Christ said to her: "You said the truth that you have no husband. Because you had five husbands; and the one you now have is not your husband; you said it rightly."

The Samaritan woman, struck by the omniscience of the Savior, who revealed her entire sinful life, now realized that she was not talking to an ordinary person. She immediately turned to Him for a solution to the long-standing dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews: whose faith is more correct and whose service is more pleasing to God. “Lord, I see that You are a prophet,” she said, “our fathers worshiped on this mountain (while she pointed to the mountain Garizin, where the ruins of the destroyed Samaritan temple were visible); but you say that the place where (God) is to be worshiped is in Jerusalem."

Jesus Christ answered her: “Believe me, the time is coming when you will worship the Father (Heavenly) neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You do not know what you bow to; but we know what we bow to: for salvation is from the Jews ( (i.e., that up to now only the Jews had the true faith, they alone performed worship that was right, pleasing to God.) But the time will come and has already come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such worshipers the Father seeks for Himself. God is Spirit (invisible, incorporeal), and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth". That is, a true and pleasing service to God is when people worship the Heavenly Father not only with their bodies and not only with outward signs and words, but with their whole being, with their whole soul, they truly believe in God, love and honor His and, by their good deeds and mercy to others, fulfill the will of God.

Hearing the new teaching, the Samaritan woman said to Jesus Christ: "I know what will come Messiah, that is Christ; when He comes, He will declare everything to us," that is, He will teach us everything.

Then Jesus Christ said to her: "Messiah - it is I who speak to you".

At this time, the disciples of the Savior returned and were surprised that He was talking to a Samaritan woman. However, none of them asked the Savior what He was talking to her about.

The Samaritan woman left her waterpot and hurried into the city. There she began to say to the people: "Go, see the Man who told me all that I did: is not He the Christ?"

And so the people left the city and went to the well where Christ was.

Meanwhile, the disciples asked the Savior, saying: "Rabbi! Eat."

But the Savior said to them, "I have food that you do not know."

The disciples began to say among themselves: "Who brought him something to eat?"

Then the Savior, explaining to them, said: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me (the Father) and to finish His work. Don’t you say that there are four more months, and the harvest will come? look at the fields (and the Lord pointed out to them the Samaritans - the inhabitants of the city, who at that time were going to Him), how they turned white and ripen for the harvest, (i.e., how these people desire to see the Savior Christ, with what eagerness they are ready to listen to Him He who reaps receives his reward and gathers fruit unto eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together. For in this case you will rightly say: one sows and the other reaps. others have labored, but you have entered into their labor."

The Samaritans who came from the city, many of whom believed in Him at the word of the woman, asked the Savior to stay with them. He went to them and stayed there for two days and taught them.

During this time, even more Samaritans believed in Him. Then they said to that woman: “We believe no longer according to your words; because they themselves heard and knew that He truly the Savior of the world, Christ".

It is known from tradition that the Samaritan woman, who conversed with Christ at the well of Jacob, devoted her entire subsequent life to preaching the gospel of Christ. For preaching the faith of Christ, she suffered in the year 66 (she was thrown into a well by torturers). Holy Church celebrates her memory 20th of March(April 2, N.S.). Her name: St. Martyr Photina(Svetlana) Samaritan woman(Samaritan woman).

NOTE: See the Gospel of John, ch. 4 , 1-42.

So He comes to the city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the plot of land given by Jacob to his son Joseph. There was the well of Jacob. Jesus, tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about six o'clock.

A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her: Give Me a drink. For His disciples went to the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman says to Him: how do you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, to drink? for the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans.

Jesus said to her in response: if you knew the gift of God and who says to you: Give Me a drink, then you yourself would ask Him, and He would give you living water.

The woman says to him: sir! you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, and his children, and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty. but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water springing up into eternal life.

The woman says to him: sir! give me this water so that I don't get thirsty and don't come here to draw.

Jesus says to her: go, call your husband and come here.

The woman said in response: I have no husband. Jesus says to her: You said the truth that you have no husband, for you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; it's fair what you said.

The woman says to Him: Lord! I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where worship should be is in Jerusalem.

Jesus says to her: Believe Me, the time is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You do not know what you bow to, but we know what we bow to, for salvation is from the Jews. But the time will come, and has already come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such worshipers the Father seeks for Himself. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.

The woman says to Him: I know that the Messiah, that is, Christ, will come; when He comes, He will announce everything to us.

Jesus says to her, It is I who am talking to you.

At this time, His disciples came and were surprised that He was talking to a woman; yet no one said, What do you require? or: what are you talking about with her?

Then the woman left her waterpot and went into the city, and said to the people: Go, see the Man Who told me all that I had done: Isn't He the Christ?

They left the city and went to Him. Meanwhile the disciples asked Him, saying: Rabbi! eat. But He said to them: I have food that you do not know. Wherefore the disciples said to one another, Who brought him food?

Jesus says to them: My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Don't you say that four more months and the harvest will come? But I say to you: lift up your eyes and look at the fields, how they have turned white and ripened for the harvest. He who reaps receives a reward and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together, for in this case the saying is true: one sows and the other reaps. I sent you to reap what you did not labor for; others labored, but you entered into their labor.

And many Samaritans from that city believed on Him at the word of the woman testifying that He had told her all that she had done. And therefore, when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. And many more believed at His word. And they said to that woman: We no longer believe by your words, for we ourselves have heard and learned that He is truly the Savior of the world, the Christ.

Interpretation on the Gospel reading

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill

The current, fifth week after Pascha is called in the church calendar "Week of the Samaritan Woman." The plot of the holiday is the conversation of the Savior with a certain woman at the well of Jacob in Samaria.

The circumstances of this meeting are extraordinary in many respects. Firstly, Christ's speech was addressed to a woman, while the Jewish teachers of the time instructed: "No one should talk to a woman on the road, even with his lawful wife"; "do not talk for a long time with a woman"; "It is better to burn the words of the Law than to teach them to a woman." Secondly, the interlocutor of the Savior was a Samaritan woman, that is, a representative of the Judeo-Assyrian tribe, hated by “pure” Jews to such an extent that any contact with the Samaritans was considered defiling by them. And, finally, the Samaritan wife turned out to be a sinner, who had five husbands before being united in a fornication with another man.

But it was to this woman, a pagan and a harlot, “who endures the heat of many passions,” that the heart-seeing Christ deigned to give “living water that dries up the fountains of sins.” Moreover, Jesus revealed to the Samaritan woman that He is the Messiah, the anointed of God, which He did not always and not in front of everyone.

Speaking of the water that fills Jacob's well, the Savior remarks: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.” This, of course, is an allegorical distinction between the Old Testament law and the grace of the New Testament miraculously multiplying in the human soul.

The most important moment of the conversation is Christ's answer to the question of the Samaritan woman about where God should be worshiped: on Mount Gerizim, as her fellow believers do, or in Jerusalem, following the example of the Jews. "Trust me that

The time is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father, says Jesus. - But the time will come, and has already come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for such worshipers the Father seeks for Himself.

In Spirit and Truth, this means that faith is not exhausted by rites and rituals, that not the dead letter of the law, but active filial love is pleasing to God. In these words of the Lord we find at the same time the most complete definition of Christianity as life in Spirit and Truth.

The conversation of Christ with the Samaritan woman was the first sermon of the New Testament in the face of the non-Jewish world, and it contained the promise that this very world would receive Christ.

The great event of the meeting of man with God at the well of Jacob brings to mind the remarkable words of one ancient theologian, who asserted that the human soul is by nature a Christian. “And according to sinful worldly custom, she is a Samaritan woman,” perhaps they will object to us. Let it be. But Christ, let us remember, did not reveal himself to the Jewish high priest, or to King Herod the Tetrarch, or to the Roman procurator, but confessed His heavenly mission to this world before the sinful Samaritan woman. And it was through her, by the providence of God, that the inhabitants of her native city were brought to Christ. Truly, around the one who has acquired the truth of the Holy Spirit, thousands will be saved. So it was, so it will be. For the source of the water of Salvation, with which Christ blessed us all, is an inexhaustible spring.

According to legend, the Savior's interlocutor was the Samaritan woman Fotina (Svetlana), who, after severe tortures, was thrown into a well for preaching the Lord.

Address of the Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill to the readers of the Kommersant newspaper dated May 27, 2000

Christ and His disciples were returning from Judea to Galilee. The shortest way lay through Samaria. But the Jews rarely used this road.

Between them and the inhabitants of Samaria for several centuries there was an irreconcilable enmity. The Samaritans were the descendants of the Gentiles who settled this land after the Babylonian captivity of the people of Israel. Over time, they adopted the Law of Moses and strictly observed it. However, between Jews and Samaritans there have always been fierce disputes about which of them better understands the true essence of religion.

The Samaritans built a temple for themselves on Mount Garizin. According to their legend, it was on this mountain that Noah's ark stopped and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob offered sacrifices to God. The Samaritans believed that the Messiah, Christ, should appear for the first time on the top of the mountain. Therefore, during prayer, every Samaritan turned to Mount Garizin.

Having set off on a journey through Samaria, the Savior stopped at the city of Sychar (according to the ancient name - Shechem). He went to the famous well of Jacob at the eastern foot of Mount Garizin.

This well was once dug by the great Patriarch Jacob in the eyes of God. The depth of the well was more than fifteen sazhens and was fed by underground springs, so it was always possible to find water in it.

Tired from the long journey through the intense heat, Jesus sat down by the well to rest. It was midday time, and His disciples went into the city to buy food.

At that time, a Samaritan woman came to the well. She brought with her a jug with a long rope, intending to get water from the well.

Usually women of this city went for water in the evening. But the Samaritan woman was notorious among the townswomen, so in order to avoid meeting them, she came for water at noon. As soon as the woman scooped water from the well, Jesus turned to her with a request to give Him a drink. By speech and clothing, the woman immediately determined that the stranger sitting in front of her was a Jew, and she was surprised: “How can You, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, to drink? For the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans.”

Seeing the woman’s innocence, the Savior turned her thought from simple water, which quenches bodily thirst, to the living water of the grace of the Holy Spirit: “If you knew the gift of God,” He said to her, “and Who says to you: give Me a drink; then you yourself asked if he had it, and he would have given you living water."

But the Samaritan woman did not understand the words of the Savior and thought that He was talking about ordinary spring water, which the inhabitants of the city called living water.

The woman asked Christ in surprise: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where did you get living water from? his?" Jesus answered her, "Whoever drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give will never be thirsty. For the water that I will give will become in him a spring of water flowing into life." eternal."

Wanting to clarify the true meaning of His words, the Lord told the woman to call her husband. The Samaritan woman was embarrassed and replied that she had no husband. To this, Christ remarked: “You said the truth that you have no husband. Because you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; you said it rightly.”

The woman realized now that she was not talking to an ordinary person. "Lord, I see that you are a prophet," she said. And she immediately turned to the Savior to resolve the long-standing dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews: whose faith is more correct and whose service is pleasing to God. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,” the woman pointed to the ruins of the destroyed Samaritan temple on Mount Garizin, “and you say that the place where worship should be is in Jerusalem.” The Savior resolved her perplexity. In a dispute with the Samaritans, the Jews had more truth, since they retained the true faith and the correct worship. But the time will come when Judaism will cease to be the one true religion, and then "the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

For it is pleasing to God when people worship not only with their bodies, outward signs and words, but with their whole being, with their whole soul, they truly believe in God, honor Him with their good deeds and mercy towards their neighbors.

Taking Christ for a prophet and cautious about His new teaching, the Samaritan woman said: "I know that the Messiah, that is, Christ, will come; when He comes, He will declare everything to us."

The woman was one of those who waited for the Messiah and His salvation with all her soul. Then Jesus Christ revealed himself to her: "The Messiah is I who speak to you."

At this time, the disciples of the Savior returned from the city. They were surprised to see their Master talking to a Samaritan woman. However, none of them dared to ask Christ what He was talking to her about.

The Savior's words about worshiping God in Spirit and Truth became a great Divine revelation addressed to humanity for all time. Now all those who love Christ and fulfill His commandments hear His Divine words: "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life."

John 4:5-43
“So he comes to the city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to Joseph his son. And there was Jacob's well. So Jesus, weary from the journey, sat by the spring. It was about six o'clock. A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me a drink. For His disciples went to the city to buy food.

A Samaritan woman says to Him: How are You, a Jew, asking me to drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For the Jews have no fellowship with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her: if you knew the gift of God, and who is he who says to you: “Give Me a drink,” you would ask Him, and He would give you living water. The woman says to him: sir. You have nothing to scoop up, and the well is deep. Where did your living water come from? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, and his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks from this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life. The woman said to him: Sir, give me this water, so that I do not thirst and do not come here to draw. Jesus said to her: Go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said: I have no husband. Jesus says: well you said, “I have no husband,” for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. It was you who said the truth. The woman said to him, Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped God on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship. Jesus said to her: Believe me, woman, that the hour is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you don't know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father also seeks that those who worship him should be like that. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. A woman says to him: I know that the Messiah is coming, called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us everything. Jesus said to her: It is I who speaks to you. Then His disciples came and marveled that He was talking to a woman. No one, however, said: what are you looking for? or: what are you talking about with her? Then the woman left her vessel for water and went into the city and said to the people: Go, see the Man Who told me all that I had done. Is he not the Christ? People left the city and went to Him. In the meantime His disciples were asking, saying: Rabbi, eat! He said to them: I have food that you do not know. Then the disciples said to each other: Did someone bring Him something to eat? Jesus said to them: My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work. Don't you say, "Four more months and the harvest will come"? So, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, how they have already turned white for the harvest. He who reaps receives a reward and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. For here the word is justified: one sows, and another reaps. I sent you to reap what you did not labor for; others labored, and you entered into their labor. From that city, many Samaritans believed in him, at the word of the woman who testified: He told me all that I had done. So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them. And He stayed there for two days. And more people believed at His word; and they said to the woman: we no longer believe according to your stories; for we ourselves have heard and know that He is truly the Savior of the world. And at the end of those two days, He went out from there into Galilee.”

How amazing and strange! The Lord so simply reveals to the Samaritan woman that He is the Messiah, Christ, who has come into the world. Why didn't he reveal this to the Jews, who constantly and persistently asked him about it? Why didn’t he even tell his closest students about it, but suddenly he opened up so easily to a foreign woman? To answer this question, first it should be noted that in the minds of the Jews by that time there already existed, formed on the basis of the texts of the sacred books, and even more so on the basis of the tradition of the teachers of the law, the image of the coming Messiah-Christ. According to their beliefs, it was supposed to be a political leader who would overthrow the Roman yoke from the Jews, and give them world political dominance in conjunction with material prosperity. And so did the disciples of Christ, who even after the Resurrection of the Savior asked Him: “Lord, are you restoring the Kingdom of Israel at this time?” (Acts 1:6).

Of course, Christ did not correspond to this ancient Israeli image of the Messiah. Therefore, when He directly announced Himself to the high priests, He was accused of blasphemy and crucified. This is how the Holy Evangelist Mark narrates about this: “Again the high priest asked Him and said to Him: Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? Jesus said: I; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven. The high priest, having torn his garments, said, What further need do we have of witnesses? You heard the blather! What do you think? And they all condemned him, holding him guilty of death" (Mk 14:61-64). The Samaritans, unlike the Jews, did not reason in any way about the coming Christ, but only knew that He would come. “The woman says to him: I know that the Messiah is coming, called Christ. When He comes, He will declare everything to us” (John 4:25).

Now it becomes clear why the Savior hid His messianic dignity from the Jews and so easily revealed himself to the Samaritan woman. Here it is quite appropriate to recall the parable of shabby furs: “No one attaches a patch of unbleached fabric to shabby clothes: otherwise, the newly sewn will be torn off from the old one, and the hole will be even worse. No one pours new wine into old wineskins: otherwise the young wine will break the wineskins, and the wine will flow out, and the wineskins will be lost; but young wine must be poured into new wineskins” (Mk 2:21-22). That is, the teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, about Christ, the Savior of the world, can be correctly perceived only by a pure mind, free from any prejudice and prejudice.

Brothers and sisters! It often happens that we come to the Church and try to accept its teachings with a mind defiled by various false wisdom about God that the world imposes on us. We draw ideas about God from literary, philosophical, occult sources, and having made up such a non-existent image of God in our minds, we eventually believe in something incomprehensible. Moreover, we bring our false wisdom into the Church and try to harmonize her teaching with our false ideas. All heretical views in the Church developed in this way: people tried to attach their pseudo-nominal knowledge to the teaching of the Church and, out of their pride, imposed it on other people. As an example of what has been said, one can recall the famous conversation that took place back in the last century between a certain priest and a certain atheist: I don't believe in God." “Well,” said the priest calmly, “me too.” And then he explained to the bewildered interlocutor: “You see, I also do not believe in a god that you do not believe in. I don't believe in the bearded old man with a bad temper that you imagine when you hear the word God. The God that I serve and that my Church preaches is different. This is the Gospel God of Love. You simply have not become seriously acquainted with the teachings of our Church, and therefore, not knowing the true image of God, you reject the false caricature of Him. And you are right about that."

But is it possible to know God perfectly by reason? In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, the holy Apostle Paul, in particular, writes that “... knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. Whoever thinks that he knows something, he still does not know anything as he should know. But whoever loves God, to him has been given knowledge from Him” (1 Corinthians 8:1-3). It is impossible to know God perfectly with the mind, because God is love, and he is known by the human heart, which was originally created and intended for the knowledge of God. Therefore, let us try to cleanse our hearts of passions and draw Christ into it through the creation of His commandments, for He said: “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he loves Me; and whoever loves me, he will be loved by my Father; and I will love him and show myself to him” (John 14:21). And again: “... whoever loves me will keep my word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23). And then we will gain the true knowledge of God. Amen.

So he comes to the city of Samara, called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to Joseph his son. And there was Jacob's well. So Jesus, weary from the journey, sat by the spring. It was about six o'clock. A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me a drink. For His disciples went to the city to buy food. A Samaritan woman said to Him: How can You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, to drink? For the Jews have no fellowship with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her: if you knew the gift of God and who is he who says to you: Give Me a drink, you would ask Him, and He would give you living water. The woman says to Him: Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where did your living water come from? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and he himself drank from it, and his sons and his cattle? Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks from this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life. The woman said to him: Sir, give me this water, so that I do not thirst and do not come here to draw. Jesus said to her: Go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said: I have no husband. Jesus says: well you said: I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. It was you who said the truth. The woman said to him, Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped God on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship. Jesus said to her: Believe me, woman, that the hour is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you don't know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father also seeks that those who worship Him should be like that. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth. A woman says to him: I know that the Messiah is coming, called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us everything. Jesus said to her: It is I who speaks to you. Then His disciples came and marveled that He was talking to a woman. No one, however, said: what are you looking for? or: what are you talking about with her? Then the woman left her vessel for water and went into the city and said to the people: Go, see the Man Who told me all that I had done. Is he not the Christ? People left the city and went to Him. Meanwhile, His disciples were asking, saying: Rabbi, eat! He said to them: I have food that you do not know. Then the disciples said to each other: Did someone bring Him something to eat? Jesus says to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Don't you say: four more months, and the harvest will come? So, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, how they have already turned white for the harvest. He who reaps receives a reward and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. For here the word is justified: one sows, and another reaps. I sent you to reap what you did not labor for; others labored, and you entered into their labor. From that city, many Samaritans believed in Him, at the word of a woman who testified: He told me all that I had done. So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them. And He stayed there for two days. And more people believed at His word; And they said to the woman: We no longer believe according to your stories, for we ourselves have heard and know that He is truly the Savior of the world. (John 4:5-42)

For the first time, the disciples of Christ began to be called Christians in Antioch - in Syria, where they ended up as a result of the very first persecutions in the second half of the 1st century. Ever since then, we have been bearing the name of Christ on ourselves, and the Church itself has been called “the namesake,” that is, of the same name as the “place of residence” of Christ God. In the Holy Spirit, Who abides everywhere and fills everything, Christ lives in His Church, lives among us, lives in people who consecrate their hearts to Him.

On the Mid-Pentecost, half way from Pascha to the day of the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples, we remember the conversation of Christ with a Samaritan woman. It is known that the Gospel of John, in which this story is told, has the smallest vocabulary of all four Gospels - only about 1,000 words. At the same time, it is the Gospel of John that is the most profound, the most theological, and the most mysterious. And the revelation of the mystery of theology, the mystery of worshiping God, is, among other things, the conversation of Christ and the Samaritan woman, which took place in the first year of the Savior's ministry, imprinted in it.

The deportation of peoples was not invented in the 20th century, the ancient rulers resettled the captured peoples in order to tear them away from their native land and deprive them of their roots. It was in this way that the population of Samaria, inhabited by pagans, was formed after the Babylonian captivity. In the days of the earthly life of Christ the Savior, Samaria was, along with Galilee and Judea, one of the three regions of Palestine, its inhabitants, having adopted the Mosaic law, retained pagan beliefs. And although the Samaritans traced the history of their kind to the biblical forefathers, the Jews despised them and did not communicate with them. The Samaritans responded in kind. Once, when the Lord was going from Galilee to Jerusalem, the Samaritans did not receive Him. It was precisely in view of the mutual hostility of the Samaritans and Jews that the Lord made the hero of the parable about who is our neighbor, the good Samaritan.

And so one day, when, after a hot scorching day, Christ, tired from a long journey, sat down at the well and said to a Samaritan woman drawing water from the well: “Give me a drink,” she was very surprised: “How can You, being a Jew, ask me to drink?” This was the beginning of the conversation, which is surprising, among other things, because it lacks a causal relationship: there are no direct answers to the questions posed, and the phrases spoken in the dialogue, although they go to a certain goal, are nonetheless not connected by external logic. In this regard, a conversation with a Samaritan woman is similar to another conversation - with Nicodemus, the Lord also spoke to him about the Spirit, and in the same way, Nicodemus, not receiving direct answers, learned something more: Christ's answers were more than his questions.

And now the Lord does not give an answer to the surprised Samaritan woman, why they spoke to her, but claims that if only a woman knew the “gift of God” - she could realize Who is in front of her, she would ask Him and He would give her living water. The woman expresses doubt, because the Lord even has nothing to draw water with, she ironically (or is she so gullible?) asks “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and he himself drank from it, and his children and cattle?” The Lord says that the water that He will give is different from the water in the well: the one who drinks it will no longer thirst, and this water will become in a person the source of eternal life. We understand that the Lord speaks about the Holy Spirit, we know that the Lord will speak about the Spirit as the water of life at the Feast of Tabernacles, but, of course, the Samaritan woman does not know this, and she asks to give her this water so that she, the poor, does not have to carry hot water from the well. In response, the Lord asks her to call her husband. And when a woman reports that she does not have a husband, the Lord reveals to her that He is indeed greater than “Father Jacob”, because He knows her whole life, knows that she had five husbands and the one who is with her now is legal can't be called a husband. And this is where the conversation changes dramatically.

The Gospel of John is compositionally and literary built in the most amazing way: there are parallels everywhere and every phrase, every story, every dialogue has its own parallels, its own continuation. In this regard, let us remember that the course of the conversation with Nathanael changed immediately after the Lord revealed to him what he had seen and knew him.

And here the same change takes place, the Lord, revealing to the woman that he knows her whole life, reached out to her heart, and then she asked about the most important thing, about what is the only thing that is needed - about worshiping God. Where to worship the Almighty: on Mount Gerizim (as the Samaritans did) or in Jerusalem? The Lord reproaches the Samaritans, because "they do not know what they bow down to," for they combined God's commandment with idolatry, and pronounces what is the essence of the whole conversation: "The time is coming and has already come when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for such worshipers the Father seeks for Himself: God is a Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. And the Samaritan woman, who at first did not understand Christ at all, then recognized Him as a prophet, now makes an assumption Who He really is: “I know,” she says, “that when Christ comes, He will announce everything to us.” And then the Lord reveals that it is He, the One Who speaks to her!

And that means that He has already announced - revealed to her - the Samaritan woman and to us - hearing and reading the Gospel, the mystery of worship!

God is Spirit, He is not limited by time or space, and He must be worshiped in this or that place, there or here - God must be worshiped in Spirit and Truth. And the time for this came when the Lord - the True God - came into our world, this time came when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost, when the earthly history of the Church began, in which we are called to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit .

And how amazing and incomprehensible is the election of God! The Lord reveals the most exalted truths not to learned men who have devoted their lives to the study and interpretation of Scripture, but to the simplest woman, a sinner, who was despised in the eyes of the Jews. Even the disciples, when they returned from the town and saw the Lord talking to the Samaritan woman, were surprised by this.

The descendants of the ancient Samaritans, many of whom then believed that Jesus "truly the Savior of the world, the Christ" still live in their separate world near Mount Gerizim in the territory of the State of Israel. There are very few of them - less than a thousand, and quite recently, in order to solve the demographic problem, a hitherto closed society was forced to recruit wives from the outside - from the former republics of the Soviet Union.

And the tradition brought to us the name of this woman who received the water of life from the Lord and became a martyr for Christ. The Samaritan woman was drowned in a well, her name in Greek sounds like "Photinia", in Slavonic - "Svetlana". And this again brings us back to the Gospel of John, because according to him, "God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all." Amen.