Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent: Isaiah 65:17-21, John 4:43-54.
Compared to some of the well-structured parables we’ve been hearing this Lent, today’s readings are a bit vague. Perhaps “transitional” is a better way to describe them. But maybe that’s the point. We are waiting for Easter in our liturgical season and perhaps waiting for many other things in our personal lives. Waiting is an unavoidable human pastime.
Early Spring (1892), Isaac Levitan | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org. This is how I’m feeling this morning, as I imagine many others are: hunkered down in our homes, the early spring around us silently thawing and a tinge of blue expressing the existential angst of waiting.
Yet the tenor of the readings is hopeful, even triumphant. Through Isaiah, the Word of God speaks about the “new heavens and new earth” he will build: “I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying.” Forget earth, this sounds like Heaven. But he is speaking of earth, too. What else could this be but the end times in which we are living? The time after Christ, when Heaven truly does come down to earth and establishes a firm foothold in the Church. Can we accept this new reality?
It requires a change in us. As he says, “The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.” For the nation of Israel, this refers to both their historical struggles as well as the former covenants established by God. The New Covenant supersedes them — it does not reduce them in the slightest but intensifies God’s connection with his people.
However, there is something scary in not remembering the past.
Is Isaiah talking about the abolishment of history? I do not think God suggests ahistoricity for humanity, but a new and transformed historicity. In other words, the Christ event and what it reveals about God’s fullness throughout history enables us to forget our tiny lens of human nation-building and power relationships. We now have insight into God’s saving plan for us and this presents a new way to look at everything. The earth is transformed.
This requires willing participation on our part. We have to live up to our end of the covenant and love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is constant work for us to live in the light, to accept God’s agape, allow it to transform us, and then give that agape to those around us. So, we are in constant transition, sometimes living in the New Covenant, but then falling into sin. The sacraments — Confession, Eucharist, Marriage, etc. — and the never-ending liturgy are our ways to re-unite with God, to re-commit to the covenant with Him. Lent itself is a season of waiting, transition, and re-commitment.
In today’s gospel, we find Christ in transition, going from Samaria to Galilee. And a royal official travels from Capernaum to Galilee to ask Jesus to return to his home with him to heal his son. Rather than travel with the man, Jesus tells him to go home where he will find that his son is healed. We are told that the man “believed” and left. Yet this is a two-day journey, and we can imagine that the man had a twinge of doubt as well as hope in his heart.
On the way home the next day, the man encounters his slaves who share the good news that his son is recovering (starting exactly at the time he met with Jesus). With this, “he and his whole household came to believe.”
In other scenes from the gospels, we see Jesus teaching specific lessons with each healing. For example, yesterday’s parable of curing the blind man by making clay from his own saliva was a sign that he, the Christ, is the method for curing our spiritual blindness. So what do we find when we dig into this abbreviated miracle? All Jesus says is, “You may go; your son will live.”
The Road to Emmaus (Der Gang nach Emmaus), 1891, Fritz von Uhde | Wikimedia Commons.
I believe the lesson here lies in the travel and the transitions of spirit that are marked along the way. First, Jesus travels to us from “his native place,” where he was not recognized as the Messiah. This was a historical event for the man as he left Nazareth for Galilee, but also symbolic of overall salvation history, where God travels from the nation of Israel where he is rejected to the rest of the world. Next, the man from Capernaum travels to him, just as we are to travel to him, to leave the comfort of our homes, especially urgent in times of distress.
Here, at the encounter with Christ, the man petitions him in earnest, with belief in his power to save. God comforts him and pours out his mercy upon the man. Refreshed in spirit thanks to the life-giving water, the man returns home, renewed in faith. This is the model for our own encounter with Christ in the sacraments, in the Church, in our hearts. He is our hope and our wellspring.
And in looking at the overall arc of the gospel, most of the time is spent in transition, in travel. Is this not the case for us, too? Our faith shows us the broad strokes: we are in transition between this world and the next, where we shall be united with God face-to-face. As we’ve noted before, the earliest Christians referred to themselves as followers “of the Way” (cf. Acts 9:1-2), letting this great eschatological fact define them.
On the micro level, too, we are constantly traveling, in transition. We get to experience the Mass infrequently and ecstatic moments of union with God even less frequently. What happens outside of those moments? Well, we call it life. It’s hard to keep up a sustained outpouring of God’s love and will. We are members of the Church in part to support us in that effort to maintain our spiritual focus. But let’s be honest about the reality of this life: it exists largely in transition between moments of sin, fear, and isolation and moments of peace within God’s light.
How are we living this life? What do we look like as we walk in this life of transition? The answer and expectation given to us is frustratingly simple; Jesus tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). We must happily embrace what the earliest Christians did and be followers “of the Way,” because the travel, the path, and the moments of transition are in union with Christ Himself.
He resided in our flesh, he knows us intimately, he is here with us. The great Life-Bringer, the source of Truth and Wisdom traveled just like us. With his Resurrection, he lives spiritually, personally, and mystically with each of us while we walk in this life of transition. We are not alone here. As baptized Christians, we are surrounded by and infused with the Spirit of the Lord. This must make our journey joyful and hopeful, despite all of its hardships and pain.
This is the “new earth” of which Isaiah speaks. The Lord has promised us salvation and a place in his house. This is why he says, “No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying.” Let us live in the promise of the Kingdom, knowing that every step we take on the Way is one step closer to him.
Spring in Italy (1890), Isaac Levitan | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org. Perhaps this is how we can feel today, regarding the world with the promise of blossoms being fed by a running stream. Regarding the spiritual promise of the mountain, that is, of the Kingdom, ahead.
Fourth Sunday in Lent: 1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41.
Today’s readings reveal to us how differently from us that the Lord sees, and how Jesus came to reveal the blindness in us and reverse it through himself. The dialectic of light vs. darkness is another way to understand good and evil, and allows us to examine our own senses in the process. Living “in the light,” we are told, is more a matter of the heart than sight.
In the first reading, the Lord sends Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint the new king he has chosen from among Jesse’s eight sons. He warns Samuel, “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected [these ones].” God has more to say about seeing and judging, which we might call discernment: “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.” So we receive an important message, that God peers into the very hearts of people when he “looks,” something that we are unable to do. We require God’s help when it comes to true discernment.
Today’s passage also gives us many ways in which David prefigures Jesus. In scripture, we often encounter the “house of David” and the “Tree of Jesse” from which Jesus comes. It’s fascinating to dwell on today’s verses where God has chosen David. As we listen to the Word of God, who will be born to Mary in Bethlehem, who will be the Good Shepherd for the world, it’s interesting to hear that Jesse dwells in Bethlehem and David is out tending the sheep when the seven other sons are presented to Samuel for potential anointing. The Word is implanting prophecy about His eventual arrival. In this way, David and the lineage of Jesse are a sign of the greater thing to come.
Root of Jesse icon, provenance unknown | Creative Commons, courtesy iconreader.wordpress.com. In Russian icons this is also known as the Tree of Jesse. Its inspiration comes from Isaiah: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Is 11:1). St. Ambrose of Milan writes: “The root is the household of the Jews, the rod is Mary, the Flower of Mary is Christ. She is rightly called a rod, for she is of the royal lineage, of the house and family of David. Her Flower is Christ, Who destroyed the stench of worldly pollution and poured out the fragrance of eternal life. As He Himself said, ‘I am a flower of the plain, a lily of the valleys.’”
Transitioning to the second reading, I am always struck at how the Word of God works through St. Paul in marvelous ways. Remember that Paul never met Christ before his death; he became an Apostle through the Risen Christ appearing to him. And what an Apostle! We have inherited so much knowledge, encouragement, and theological understanding from him.
His conversion to Christ is a great example of what we shall see in the gospel reading: the light of Christ opens his eyes. He was spiritually blind and this blindness was rendered literally for him. We are told, “Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank” (Acts 9:8-9). There is a sense of penance here, where Saul, on his way to becoming St. Paul, must go into the desert to fast and contemplate (like we do in Lent).
But this is just the beginning for him, as he will soon pick up his cross and follow Christ in both suffering and spreading the message of salvation. The disciple Ananias is hesitant to cure his blindness as Christ bids him, but Christ tells him, “he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15-16). Oh, the penance will continue! To whom much is given, much will be required (Lk 12:48), says the Lord. At Ananias’s touch, the blindness falls from his eyes “like scales,” he is baptized, and he is on his new path.
In today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he must have been thinking of his own experience when he writes, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” Note that he doesn’t say, you were once in darkness, but that they were darkness and now are light. He was, in fact, “darkness” in both spiritual sight and deed since he physically persecuted disciples of Christ before his own conversion. Thus Paul gives us another understanding of darkness and light not just being aspects of sight (either physical or spiritual), but also ways of being.
He continues, “Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness.” Note how he conceives of light as “producing” goodness, not just revealing it. And how darkness produces fruitless works. We see Paul building the Church, providing instruction for fledgling communities of those baptized in Christ. Through their Baptism, Christ has opened their eyes to spiritual light, and now Paul is deepening their understanding of that light. It is a light, he says, that is active and productive in the world. This is the Holy Spirit working through the Church, part and parcel of a Baptism in Christ, who is the gateway to the divine essence, an essence that continually creates goodness in the world.
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (1600-1601), Caravaggio | Wikimedia Commons. There is much to say about this, one of Caravaggio’s masterpieces, from the striking use of light to the opening of St. Paul at the same time of blinding him, but let’s contemplate on what Caravaggio might be saying about the person Saul was at that point by giving us such a magnificent horse’s ass to look at!
This is a light that doesn’t just reveal truth but transforms the person. Today’s gospel from St. John is a masterpiece of depicting this revelation in the curing of the blind man. This morning, Bishop Robert Barron presents a great exposition of the gospel reading in his live-streamed daily mass and mentions how St. John’s writing is akin to icon writing, where you can look at every detail in an icon and see how rich it is in symbolism and tells another aspect of the story.
The first detail to note is that the man is blind from birth — not from cataracts or disease, but fundamentally blind since he came into the world. Why is this important? St. Augustine tells us: “that blind man is the human race; for this blindness had place in the first man, through sin, from whom we all draw our origin, not only in respect of death, but also of unrighteousness. For if unbelief is blindness…” (Tractate 44 on John 9, 1). Recall God telling Samuel “not as man sees does God see,” and here we are given a story about how man (in general) cannot see.
Christ passes by this man, but when his disciples fruitlessly question who is at fault for the man’s blindness, he stops. He says, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” Again, this clues us in to the universal application of the story to all of mankind. Jesus adds, “We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. … While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus speaks here of the irresistible nature of the Spirit of the Lord, active in the world. He is compelled, he must do the works of God while here on earth. To that end, he sets about healing the blind man. He is not asked to do this, he does it gratuitously.
As a child, I always wondered about this next bit of the gospel. With other miracles, we hear Jesus say, “your faith has healed you,” or someone is healed just by touching the hem of his garment. But here we see something that seems like a magician’s ritual: “he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes.” Is this necessary? How is spitting and making clay related to Christ’s mission on earth?
Nothing Jesus does is meaningless, and he certainly doesn’t need obscure rituals to heal people. So let’s examine this act and what it signifies. St. Augustine tells us plainly, “The Word is as it were the spittle, the Flesh is the earth” (Sermon 85 on the New Testament [CXXXV. Ben.], 1). Just as “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,” (Gen 2:7), we see Christ initiate a similar act of creation using the dust on the ground. This act of (re-)creation for humanity comes in the form of the uniting of the Word (his spittle) and humanity (the earth); in other words, Jesus Himself is the clay that is the unity of the river of life (spittle) and the earth. Jesus spreads Himself on the eyes of the blind man.
And Christ emphasizes the great mystical unity and energy that is the Trinity by telling him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” John helpfully tells us, “which means Sent,” so we can connect the dots. First, washing in the pool represents Baptism. What is the Baptism Christ offers us? St. John the Baptist tells us, “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 3:16). So, Christ is pointing to the work of the Holy Spirit in this baptism in the Pool of Siloam.
Second, the pool’s name means “Sent,” and Jesus has just said, “We have to do the works of the one who sent me.” Thus, the entire affair is done under the auspices of God the Father, who has sent Christ and sends the Holy Spirit. The life-giving water of the Holy Trinity, the overflowing love that characterizes the essence of our Three-in-One God, is the action that grants sight to the man blind from birth.
Healing of the Blind Man from Birth, unknown provenance | Creative Commons, courtesy johnsanidopoulos.com.
Let’s think more about this pool named Sent. After the man is cured of his blindness, he is asked many times by his neighbors and the Pharisees how this came about. His answer is simple: “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.” But the more he is interrogated, the more he must contemplate this action and the more he must be the light (to recall the second reading from St. Paul). This man finally takes on the role of teacher to the Pharisees, a startling reversal for one who was a beggar:
“This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”
He answers them with the ineffable logic of the truth and the light. And so this man sets the stage for several millennia of Christians who — once they accept Baptism and the light offered by Christ — answer skeptics with clear logic. From St. Augustine through the medieval scholastics like St. Thomas Aquinas to contemporary popes, we hear similar explanations as they evangelize in the light of Christ.
And so we can see how the man himself is sent from the pool by God, carrying a new message for the world. All of us who are baptized Christians both receive his mercy and love have been sent by God to give his mercy and love to the world.
This inevitably means that we will be rejected by those living in darkness. Christ finds the man after the Pharisees kick him out of the temple and reveals his true nature to him. He tells him, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” Here we find the double-edged sword that is the Truth: it not only saves us from spiritual blindness, but it condemns those who cling to their flawed human “sight.” God’s plan is to unite us to Him, and those who choose darkness over the light will be condemned to live in perpetual blindness.
The Old Guitarist (1903-1904), Pablo Picasso | Wikimedia Commons. Picasso painted this during his Blue Period, a time of depression and desolation after his good friend committed suicide. We see a resignation to death in this old, blind guitarist, clinging to life in the form of his guitar. When seen in the light of today’s gospel, we might see in this the blind clinging to their earthly concerns and ways of knowing, pushing away the light offered by Christ and soon to be condemned to dwell for all eternity in that darkness unless they accept Christ.
This brings me back to St. Paul, who lived his life being sent by the Lord, being rejected by those in darkness. Yet he never failed in passing along this great impetus of being sent — his evangelization aimed to encourage others in spreading the faith, living the faith, being active, not stagnant. As he tells us today, “now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.”
Third Sunday in Lent: Exodus 17:3-7, Romans 5:1-2, 5-8, John 4:5-42.
Today’s readings map the importance of water not just as a lifeforce for our bodies, but as a symbol of the spiritual nourishment provided by God. We are given two seminal scriptural stories: Moses striking the rock at Massah and Meribah to let forth water and Jesus revealing his gift of “living water” to the Samaritan woman at the well. Both episodes underscore the way our bodily and spiritual needs intertwine in our faith.
The first question we might ask is, why water? It’s so mundane. Yes, we rely on it to live, our bodies consist mostly of water, but why would it be associated with holiness? Why is it used for baptism in Christ?
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830-1832), Katsushika Hokusai | Wikimedia Commons.
Our early Church Father Tertullian (c.155 AD – c.240 AD) speaks movingly about the fact that water was present early in creation. In his treatise, On Baptism, he recalls the first sentence from the Book of Genesis, where the earth is a formless void and “the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the waters.” Tertullian writes:
“The first thing, O man, which you have to venerate, is the age of the waters in that their substance is ancient; the second, their dignity, in that they were the seat of the Divine Spirit, more pleasing to Him, no doubt, than all the other than existing elements. For the darkness was total thus far, shapeless, without the ornament of stars; and the abyss gloomy; and the earth unfurnished; and the heaven unwrought: water alone — always a perfect, gladsome, simple material substance, pure in itself — supplied a worthy vehicle to God. What of the fact that waters were in some way the regulating powers by which the disposition of the world thenceforward was constituted by God?”
Thus, Tertullian demonstrates how water is ancient, dignified, pleasing to the Holy Spirit, pure, and was instrumental for God when forming the rest of Creation. Due to this intimate relationship with the Spirit, all waters, he says, “attain the sacramental power of sanctification; for the Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens, and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from Himself.” And just as water washes the dirt from our skin, it washes the spiritual stain of sin from our souls.
Water figures mightily in the Exodus story. It is the saving agent for the Israelites and the humbling force against Pharaoh’s army when God parts the sea as Moses raises his staff. And in today’s reading, we hear of the famous place with a double name, Massah and Meribah, which is invoked every day in the Liturgy of the Hours with the invitatory from Psalm 95. “The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD in our midst or not?’” God has already delivered them from the hands of Pharaoh, he has given them manna and quail to eat, and so their doubt displeases him so much that he declares the entire generation will have to wander the desert for 40 years and only the next generation will see the promised land.
Moses Striking the Rock (1596), Abraham Bloemaert | Wikimedia Commons. I quite like this interpretation of the scene at Massah and Meribah because it displays carousing, clueless Israelites who are focused on their material needs and bodies. Meanwhile, Moses strikes the rock in the background, imploring them to pay attention to the miracles God is working in their midst. You can sense his frustration with the unfocused and unfaithful tribe he is leading.
The passage opens with an important statement that we should not overlook. It reads, “In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses …” Thirst for water is answered by God, and is forever associated with faith, or lack of faith. When they thirst for water, they are also thirsting for reassurance, for deliverance. Faith in God is what will bring them both of these, and because they grumble and revolt against Moses instead of staying strong in faith, God makes them an example for the rest of our salvation history. He delivers water to us, but we must wait 1,500 years before Christ makes it clear what type of water God provides.
The second reading from St. Paul to the Romans contains a crucial phrase that connects Massah and Meribah to the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Referring to Christ’s death and Resurrection, St. Paul writes, “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” All three Persons of the Trinity are present in this concise statement, and the verb is “pour.” God’s unfathomable love is being poured into our hearts. Here we get to the core of what Jesus will refer to as “living water.”
Before diving into the gospel reading, let’s think about wells for a moment. Wells are our way of digging deep for the water God has planted in the earth in the form of natural springs. We are reaching out to God’s providence when we dig wells. We are displaying a primordial faith in our Creator who provides for us. Also, we dig wells when we want to settle in a place for a period of time. Wells, therefore, represent a stable relationship between ourselves and the wonders of Creation that God has given to help support us.
In his incredible book Wellspring of Worship, Jean Corbon, OP, explores the fundamental symbolism of water as he describes the mystical wellspring of worship that is the liturgy. He writes:
“Men thirst and look for water wherever they think they will find it. As they wander without any horizon in sight and no way of escape, they dig a well each time they pitch their tent. … Nor does he sleep who placed in the human soul both the thirst and the expectation. Indeed, he is the first to thirst and set out in search of us, to the point of joining us beside our pathetic wells.”
Corbon paints a picture of dependence on the part of humanity and something of a tavern owner in God (to borrow one of my favorite images of God from Simon Tugwell, OP). God the tavern keeper, offering us the most satisfying drink, has planted the thirst in us and is also the one who fulfills the thirst.
As we see at Massah and Meribah, thirst is physical and spiritual. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this: “Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (2560). Thirst, therefore, defines our mutual relationship with God. And thirst is the thing that brings Jesus and the Samaritan woman together at the well in the noonday heat.
Thirst (2011), Sigalit Landau | Creative Commons. This striking sculpture by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau depicts male and female forms in poses that might be supplication, physical effort, strain, or resignation upon a rock. The rock suggests Massah and Meribah (and there is an inscription in Hebrew on the back of the rock for which I wish I knew the translation). The two tones of marble suggest a meeting of humanity and God. The sculpture, carved in two gigantic chunks of Rosa Portugalo and Calacatta Gold marble, rests at the Elma hotel in Zichron Yaakov, Israel.
Note, in fact, who asks for water first in our gospel reading: it is Jesus. The Lord thirsts for us — what a remarkable thing! The source of life, beauty and truth, perfect in Himself without any needs … thirsts for an authentic and pure relationship with us! If you haven’t considered this before, realize that this sets our religion and our God apart from all other gods and all other religions.
The Samaritan woman is certainly struck by Jesus’s request. Everyone — Jews and Gentiles alike — was surprised by his opening of the New Covenant to all peoples on earth. Her surprised words, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” are met with what seems like one of the great wry understatements in all of the gospels: “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Of course, it’s not wry or an understatement, but the honest truth that he gives her in their moment of mutual thirst.
She doesn’t quite understand what he’s saying, so he elaborates: “the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” As with every word of this passage, so much depth inhabits these words. Jesus is proclaiming the significance of the New Covenant, that his water (the love he will pour out onto humanity with his death and Resurrection) will become a spring for us that wells up to eternal life. A spring is self-regenerating, and let us realize that the self-regenerating aspect of Christianity is the active work of Christ’s Spirit, renewing us in the liturgy and the sacraments. Furthermore, the goal of this water is not physical life but eternal life. Jesus establishes a new goal, a new end-game that we are able to experience thanks to him.
The Samaritan woman exclaims that she would love to have this water, “so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” She doesn’t quite get it. She still thinks this is about her physical needs (and psychological, since having to keep coming there in the midday sun to avoid the sneers of the more upstanding women of the community would certainly mean psychological stress). So she responds to God’s thirst with her own thirst, but in order to purify her thirst and point it towards her spiritual needs, not just her physical ones, God tests her.
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, ~350 AD in the catacombs beneath Rome. Note that many scholars believe this is a closer representation of Christ to how Jews commonly looked in his time, clean-shaven and short-haired. But, we must of course reconcile that with the image found on the Shroud of Turin.
He tells her to get her husband. Certainly a moment of soul-searching for her, she decides to speak the truth and tell him about her unmarried state. Without scorn or harsh judgment, Jesus affirms her statement and details her life of sin to that point. Our lesson here is twofold: we must recognize and atone for our sins in order to begin a correct relationship with God, and God demands truth in our relationship. Because she meets him in truth, the remainder of their conversation is startling in its revelation.
Jesus proclaims to her, the outcast and sinner who is thirsty for Him and honest with Him:
“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”
Worshipping in Spirit and truth. This is what the Father thirsts for because he “is Spirit” and we meet him “in Spirit and truth.” It is the activity of our souls, not the activity of our bodies in a certain place (like the mountain or Jerusalem). It is the work of intent and heart, not of bodies and outward ritual.
Jesus reiterates this point when his disciples ask him if he wants to eat and he responds, “I have food to eat of which you do not know. … My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.” To finish his work! The work of Creation started by God will be finished, refined in the fire of the sacrifice, to purify humanity and make them finally ready to unite with God on the spiritual level for which he always intended.
But before this exchange with the disciples, he makes the most shocking statement in private to the Samaritan woman, acknowledging, “I am he [the Messiah], the one speaking with you.” How can we reconcile this revelation of his identity when he spends much of the gospels asking people not to talk about him as the Messiah and not fully proclaiming it until the time just before his Passion in Jerusalem? How else except to understand this encounter as the prototype for all relationships with God: when we meet him personally, in truth, honestly thirsting for him, then he will share with us all of his glory and revelation. She is the archetype of the sinner who converts in honesty, is baptized in water of the Spirit, and enjoys an honest and blessed existence close to God.
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, 19th century Russian icon, author unknown | Creative Commons. In this classic icon representation of the gospel scene, we see the scope of the story, from Jesus’s reference to the water in the well (which has taken on a cruciform appearance with his anointing presence) to the disciples backed by mountains (signifying enlightenment and spiritual matters) and the townspeople moving from the town to the mountain.
There is so much to say here: how the townspeople experience this conversion themselves (“We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”), how the well is Jacob’s well and Christ is the Anointed One, greater than the prior prophets and figures in the scriptures and instilling a new meaning on water and the well, etc. But, I’ve gone on long enough.
One last thing to mention that brings us back to St. Paul’s words in the second reading, “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” The living water that Christ brings to the Samaritan woman at the well is the very same “love of God” St. Paul writes about. That’s why Paul speaks of it as being “poured out.”
Corbon gives us a lovely way to connect water with the love of God:
In the communion of the Blessed Trinity … we find life in its eternal outpouring; the river of life, which John contemplates at the heart of history, is an energy of love at work before the world was. … Yes, the mysterious river of divine communion is an outpouring of love among the Three, and in it eternal life consists. Each person is gift and acceptance of gift. … The river is love, but a love that does not arise in the human heart. The river is life, but a life that does not flow from the human heart. That is because this river, this energy, is wholly other; it is the self-opening of our thrice-holy God.
This is the theology of the Trinity: not just three Persons contained in one God, but three Persons endlessly pouring out their love among one another. Here is the river of life, the river of love, the wellspring of worship: it is located in the “self-opening of our thrice-holy God.” That is why Christ experienced the Passion, death, and Resurrection. He shared with us this self-sacrificing quality of the Trinity; more than shared, he poured upon all of history the river of love that is the fundamental action of the Trinity. THIS is his living water, of which he tells the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God …”
If you knew the gift, indeed!
Holy Trinity (1620), Hendrick van Balen | Wikimedia Commons. I greatly appreciate the efforts to which van Balen goes to show the loving gazes shared between the three Persons of the Trinity as well as Christ’s crucified foot resting on the world with his Father’s.
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent: Isaiah 55:10-11, Matthew 6:7-15.
The Word of God: could there be a more exciting topic for those of us with English degrees? If your academic training is centered on how words create and describe culture, then the Word of God in scripture is the pinnacle of significance. In addition to literature and cultural studies, we moderns have scientific systems for analyzing words and languages: semiotics (thanks to Ferdinand de Saussure) and linguistics (looking at you, Noam Chomsky), to name some biggies. But humans have always been aware of the power of words. The Judeo-Christian understanding of the Word of God is that it is not just an utterance with theological significance, but the very mechanism of creation. From the beginning of scripture and Jewish consciousness, this has been the case. Imagine if every time you spoke of something, it came to be. That’s the Word of God.
We read an engaging set of verses about the Word from Isaiah in today’s readings. Suiting the beauty of his imagery, the living Word of God, Jesus, gives us the Lord’s Prayer in the gospel according to Matthew. What a day of readings!
Isaiah’s verses form a lovely piece of poetry. He says that just as rain and snow water the earth, “making it fertile and fruitful, Giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats,” so God’s Word “that goes forth from my mouth” will act in the world. We receive a promise from God that his will will, in fact, be done: “It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” For me, this is greatly comforting and reassuring. In a world that appears more godless by the minute, I begin to fear God’s will is completely betrayed and somehow lost. But God assures us that his Word is a generative, active force, as reliable and inexorable as the rain that makes the earth fertile. It’s not up to me to make sure God’s will is done (although I pray for it daily); his Word contains all of the power needed to complete his will. Thanks be to God!
Stained Glass Design, Moses (1900-1910), Frederick James Shields | Creative Commons, courtesy Bantock House and Park/ArtUK.
This Word is such an active force — and issues from such an inscrutable source — that Isaiah, just a few verses prior to today’s reading, prophesies to the Jews: “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God” (Is 55:5). This “calling” of other nations happens 700 years after Isaiah in the form of the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ. Isaiah describes the remarkable spread of Christianity to this day.
Let us contemplate this amazing Word. The Word of God is evident in the time of promises, in his covenants with Abraham, Moses, David, and other figures in the Old Testament. His Word generates action in the Chosen People, who alternately live out his commands and are blessed or betray them and incur wrath and misfortune. It manifests itself throughout the history of the Jews, not just as words inscribed in stone tablets as if a dead text. In fact, Moses breaks the tablets — they’re not the point; the Word must live actively. The Word continues to flow forth from the mouth of the prophets; it spills into the dreams of men and women; it orients every action recorded about these people.
And we cast back further to find that the Word always existed. It was the very generative force that made the cosmos. It issues forth from God, both an integral part of him and somehow ontologically separate from him. St. John opens his gospel with perhaps the most complex and beautiful words in all of scripture: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3). Indeed, we hear from Eve in Genesis that they are told about the garden and the forbidden tree from God, so we know that the Word was with them at this point. The Word of God is not made, like the other aspects of the cosmos, but is “with God” and “is God” from the beginning. Even deeper, here, the original Greek word is logos, which does mean word but also means an organizing principle, something that makes meaning.
And in the opening prologue to John’s gospel, we of course read that “the Logos became flesh and lived among us.” That is, the generative Word of God, the organizing principle of the universe that enables meaning to be made, well, it took on human flesh. Our ancestors in the faith would have recognized the incomprehensible power in this person Jesus Christ, the logos in the flesh, even if it comes to us 2,000 years later as a sort of ho-hum story. Something new happened that ended the time of promises and began the end times: the Word that existed from the beginning is made flesh, has a mother named Mary.
Is this really the same Word of God that we know has been active throughout the history of humanity? Our Church Father, Origen, verifies this in his Commentaries on John when contemplating the death of Jesus:
But while it is certainly a man who died, the Truth, Wisdom, Peace and Justice, of whom it is written, “The Word was God,” was not a man; and the God who is the Word, and the Truth, and Wisdom and Justice, is not dead. For the Image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation, is incapable of death.
This insight sheds light on the resurrection. It does not diminish the sacrifice in the least, as if the Word of God knew he could not die so Jesus’s Passion and death was just a show. In fact, it elevates the Passion, death, and resurrection because God deigned to truly suffer and die for us instead of ruling the created world in power (simple!) or majestically exiting the scene as an untouchable deity might (like the Greek gods would in their mythology).
Consider that. The Word of God deliberately chose a specific way of becoming man, revealing the truth in Himself, submitting to human authority, suffering, and offering himself back to the Father in the greatest act of love. This life he led was not an accident and he certainly had as many other options available as you can imagine (and more we can’t imagine).
His only Begotten Son and the Word of God (sketch for a fresco in the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev 1885-1896), Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov | Wikimedia Commons
Why? What causes the invincible Word of God that made all of creation choose such a torturous existence as a human? It might just be that it is the perfect way for Jesus to be the ultimate teacher as well as the very method of our salvation. As a simple man who bleeds and suffers, he is our brother, yet as the life-giving Word, he alone can accomplish our salvation. As a human like us, he demonstrates in his life how to have a relationship with the Father, but as God he brings the reality of the Father into the world to forever change it. He is both the role model and reality being modeled.
This brings us to the reading from Matthew where Jesus inhabits the role of teacher when he says, “This is how you are to pray.” And then we are given the Lord’s Prayer, the depths of which are too great to plumb in a simple blog post. If you want to better understand the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, read Pope Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth, which contains a great 40-page chapter devoted to the Lord’s Prayer.
But let us note just a few things. We hear echoes of Isaiah’s verses in “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Remember, God promises that his Word “shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” Thus, we signal our acceptance of how the Word acts in the world, and we give it our blessing, our hope for its speedy success.
The second thing that strikes me is the verbal equation, “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I’ve always wondered why this isn’t stated the other way around, i.e., “as your father forgives you, you should forgive others.” I think my confusion stems from the use of the word “as,” which I typically take to mean “in the manner.” Thankfully, today’s reading includes the verses following the bestowal of the Lord’s Prayer, where Christ doubles down on the formulation and explains what He means: “If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” Aha! I should be reading it in this way: “forgive us our trespasses if we are able to forgive those who trespass against us.” Even if we do everything according to His will (such as forgiving others), we must also pray for his grace and salvation, which is not guaranteed, but a gift.
As we return to Isaiah’s verses that God’s Word will make the earth fruitful and do his will, we are struck with just how true this is and in how many ways we can see it. God’s will that we are brought into perfect communion with him: the liturgy is established by the Word made Flesh; his will that men testify to his truth at the risk of their own lives: the saints and the martyrs; his will that we love our neighbors as ourselves: countless acts of true charity done in the name of the Lord. Christ the Word has made this possible on earth in a way it was never possible before his great sacrifice.
