How a spring is born

The Savior of the world arrives at Jacob's well, the seer of the Pillar to heaven, of the Ladder of God. Now it was no longer a ladder, but God Himself had descended to earth. And He was thirsty and hungry and sweaty from the journey in the heart of the furnace of the day. He was infinitely thirsty for the love that He had planted in each of us in the water in the wombs of our mothers. He had given us water, and now no one gives it to Him anymore, because people, most of them, are not food and water and rest, but sharp stones on the way and thorns in the Path of God.

God draws His soul higher than the heavens and yet, out of infinite humility, humble in the dust of the torrid noon. He searches, scrutinizes, and investigates with the radar of love. He feels the pain of each one, the thirst, the desire, the unfulfillment.

He was near Jacob's well, in Samaria. Here, the people remained frozen in their veneration of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, without the Tabernacle of Moses, without the Temple of Solomon, without the earthquake of Isaiah, without the fire from heaven of Elijah. They were sectarians, some modern-day right-winger would say contemptuously. Frozen in their designs, troglodytes.

And yet God sees the immortal souls of people in whom He has created His image, and He longs to bathe in the waters of their eyes and bless them for eternity.

Then comes a woman of questionable morals, an athlete of men, an indecisive one, who was always looking for something else, breaking the laws of conjugal fidelity, from flower to flower, always sad, always in the suffering of seeing that her love is never enough. She came to draw water; there was a desert of love in her, but the longing for the ever-flowing Fountain of love had not dried up.

And God feels this longing, and in the abyss of her heart, the living water drips. One drop is enough to give birth to a Fountain.

At first, the woman does not understand. He keeps telling her that He has no rope, no bucket, that the well is deep.

Amen, indeed, the Well God is infinitely deep, but Christ makes Himself to everyone both a Vessel of great value, and a chain of light, and holy Water, in His longing to be loved, and in the pain of loving without response.

He sees and feels and watches over the ocean of tears of every suffering person and wonderfully changes the tear of pain into the tearful flash of unchanging joy. It is all the discretion, and the finesse, and together the pain, and the tenderness of our God who ascends the Cross in our place.

And with baby steps, sea buckthorn brings the woman closer to the infinite Fountain, and gives birth to a fountain of life in her heart, and an outpouring of tears and true repentance.

Lost among bad choices, she becomes an Apostle and a prophet, for she truly sees that the Fountain of the prophets is near her.

And she asks about worship, about Jerusalem and Gerizim, about the Water that will be poured out over the universe in the Holy Spirit, after Christ will nail the wickedness of the entire world to the Cross, and the infinite Fire will burn through His Blood all the chaff of hell of people crushed in the rumination of the non-being within them.

And she learns the great and most holy mysteries of worship in Spirit and Truth to the Father. That is, the saving dogma of the Most Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son (Truth), and the Holy Spirit. What the Disciples did not even dream of, this humble woman, from the periphery of the world, receives, due to her unspeakable longing for the crucified Love. And she truly sees how the Light of the Cross reigns over the universe, for God beside her tells her how every place where you plant the Cross becomes the Jerusalem of the most pure Sacrifice of the Lamb, and how every Church becomes an Altar, and Golgotha, and Tomb, and Holy Mountain and Throne of the risen God. She sees how the earth will be covered with hundreds of thousands of small Jerusalems, the Churches, and billions of living tombs, the people, in which the Body of Christ rests in the Eucharist, and from which the incarnate Logos rises in the mystery of theosis.

This poor woman, amidst the tears of barrenness, sees the Eucharist of the ages, the Living Water, and how Heaven will be filled with humble people who cry in prayer and thus prolong, in their hearts, the divine waters of Baptism. And if she hid at noon by the well, she becomes a Disciple of God, and a sweet Apostle of the Gospel, and turns the city to God, and pours out from her heart, the endless water of truth that she received from the infinite Source. And later she will die for the Truth, testifying to the gentle eyes of the Teacher who changed her life into light: He told me all that I have done.

Holy Martyr Photini, pray with tears for us.