Photini

Jesus shines his light into the life of the Samaritan woman.

He comes to the well of their mutual father Jacob in the middle of the day - at the sixth hour, that is, at the height of noon - when the sun is at its highest in the sky and the day is at its hottest and brightest point. Given these conditions, it's no wonder that Jesus was weary at this time and that he sat down beside the well to rest (John 4:6).

That's no wonder, but here is a wonder: a woman comes to draw water from the well at the sixth hour. A sane woman would come to the well early in the morning, during the cool of the day, to draw the day's water. These are desert conditions, don't forget. Many have suggested that this Samaritan woman chooses this time to come to the well, in all this heat and brightness, because of a darkness in her life. That is, she comes at noon because no one else comes at noon. We can understand that a woman who had gone through five husbands and was now living with a man not her husband was perhaps outcast among the women of her community.  We don't really know this, but it may be that a woman so popular with the men was rather unpopular with the women. And so she wants to avoid them. Small wonder. That's understandable.

To escape the judgments, criticisms, and harassment of the other women, she comes to the well at the least popular time, when it's at its hottest and brightest and most physically uncomfortable. Better to be physically uncomfortable than to endure the judgmental looks of others - you know that's true. Better the staring eye of the noonday sun than the scornful eye of an enemy. 

So to keep herself in the dark, she comes to the well in the light and finds sitting there by the well the one who is light himself, weary from his journey and asking her for water.

They speak of water and eternal life, of Samaritans and Jews, and of worship. Jesus reveals to her the true worship, which is worship in spirit and truth. And he tells her everything she'd ever done, as she puts it (John 4:39). He shines his light into her life.

Trying to hide, she finds herself exposed - but not exposed by her judgmental rivals - rather, exposed to the light by her merciful and loving Lord.

Sin festers in the dark and dies in the light. We are healed from sin, which is really a disease, by exposing into the light. This is why confession is a sacrament of healing. When we sin, it's as though we've been bitten by a poisonous creature and our choice is to leave the poison in the wound to do its work killing us or to draw the poison out into the light where it can do us no harm.

 Truly, Jesus is the physician of our souls and bodies. And today,  he heals the Samaritan woman by drawing the poison of her secret sin out into the light. She doesn't quite confess it, though what she says is true when she says, 'I have no husband" (4:17). Nonetheless, when Jesus exposes the true meaning of her words to her she recognizes and admits the truth of them by confessing that Jesus is a prophet (4:19) - that is, that his words are the words of God and are the truth.

Hearing all that Jesus says and recognizing that he speaks the word of God, she leaves behind her water jar and hastens back to the very community she had been avoiding to tell them all that the long-expected Christ is sitting by their father's well. How can she, an outcast, go among those who have despised her to preach the gospel? But that is what she does. Like the apostles who leave their nets when they are called by Jesus, she leaves behind her water jar to go and preach the gospel to the whole city.[i] She is called by our tradition equal-to-the-apostles.

She is no longer afraid of what other people think of her. Christ frees her from her fear of others' judgment. I'm quite sure he doesn't free her from others' judgment. When this outcast woman of poor reputation comes into the city proclaiming that she has encountered the Christ, I'm sure she received more than one stink eye and suspicious glare. "Why should we trust a woman like you?" I expect many thought or even said. But she is freed from her fear of that judgment. She leaves that fear behind with her water jar at the well, because she has been freed from the darkness in her life by the light of the world, and no worldly power can stop the power of her God-given conviction. And so through her, many come to believe. She brings many into the light – to Christ – because Jesus is the light. She is like the first evangelist, bringing people to Christ even before he dies and rises from the dead.

By tradition, we know that she was baptized and brought her five sisters and her two sons into the faith and they all continued to evangelize. After the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, she and her family traveled to Carthage to preach the gospel there until they, too, were martyred.

And we also know the name she received in her baptism: Photini, the enlightened one, for she received the light of Christ and let it shine before all with neither fear nor shame again until the end of her life.

In some ways, Photini is the quintessential baptismal name. Some of the fathers of the Church regarded all the mysteries of initiation into the Church and into the body of Christ – baptism, chrismation, and eucharist - to be a single mystery, which they name illumination or enlightenment. The one thus received is, therefore, Photini and Photini becomes for us all an image of our baptism. Like Photini, we are all subject to death in our sins when Christ encounters us at the well, or at the font of our baptism, through which he shines his light into our darkness and illumines us. May we all, like Photini, having been filled with grace through the holy mysteries, live out our whole lives with evangelical fervor. Like her, let us proclaim to everyone we meet without fear of what they might think of us, the good news of Christ’s coming into the world and saving us from sin and death by his death and resurrection.

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[i] Chrysostom: "As the apostles left their nets on being called, so she leaves her water jar to do the work of an evangelist by calling not one or two people, as Andrew and Philip did, but a whole city" (Homilies on the Gospel of John 34.1).

A Paralytic Church?

Our Church is dwindling – that is, our particular Church here in the United States: the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church sui iuris of Pittsburgh. We’re about one third the size we were in 1990.* There are also signs of diminishment in the Catholic Church in the United States as a whole.† And, indeed, in all of Christianity in the United States as a whole.† We're shrinking. Have you seen the numbers?

So, what can we do? Well, we can lie down and wait for death. That’s one option. Or, we can rise, take up our mat, and walk (John 5:8). In some ways, our Church is like the paralytic man lying by the sheep pool, who had been ill for thirty-eight years (John 5:2-5).

Incidentally, that is a long time to be sick, don’t you think? That is my whole life – I turn thirty-eight this year. That helps gives me a sense of how long this man had waited for healing – my whole life.

In some ways, as a Church that’s been dwindling for about that long, we can identify with this paralytic man. Maybe we feel powerless as we sit here and watch our limbs wither. “What can we do about it?” we wonder. Sometimes we blame others and shift the responsibility, saying, "I have no one to put me into the pool when it is stirred up” (John 5:7).

Meanwhile, we sit by the sheep pool of healing. And we watch others get healed. After communism fell, our own Churches in Eastern Europe experienced enormous growth. Our seminaries there are bursting at the seams compared to here. And for another example, the Church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds. We’re talking more than five thousand percent growth over the last century.‡

Meanwhile, we shrink. We say with the paralytic, “While I am going [to the pool to be healed], another steps down before me" (John 5:7). We sit paralyzed by the pool and wonder who will put us into the water so that we too can be healed.

Well, Jesus is asking us, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). Do we? Or, are we too comfortable as we are? Are we even aware that we stand in need of such healing? Or, are we so focused on our own problems, our own lives, our own parish, that we have no regard for the diminishment of our larger particular Church? Or even for the diminishment of Christianity as a whole across this nation?

Of course, we want to be healed, we say. Heal us, Lord Jesus! Descend upon us, O holy and life-creating Spirit, and give us new life and growth!

This is all well and good, but be advised, this healing and new life and growth may require breaking some of our own personal rules and dearly-held expectations (which are not to be confused with the commands of God).

For example, it was forbidden among the Jews to carry certain loads in certain ways on the Sabbath (John 5:10). This was a dearly-held custom or human tradition – part of the Mishnah around the Torah – but not the Torah itself. 

It is worth recalling that Torah nowhere explicitly forbids carrying an item from one place to another on the Sabbath. Torah forbids work on the Sabbath. But what is work? Later Mishnah strives to answer this question. Mishnah developed to serve as “a fence around Torah”– to make it so that if a pious Jew follows Mishnah, he cannot come even close to breaking Torah. These are human laws built around Torah and not Torah itself. They’re good inasmuch as they bring the people closer to the Lord. But, Jesus above all has the authority to supersede Mishnah because he himself is the word of God before all ages and is himself the source of Torah.

So it is meaningful when Jesus, the Word of God, says to the man on the Sabbath, “Rise, pick up your mat, and walk” (John 5:8). And he doesn't just say, “Rise and walk.” The command to go against Mishnah – to pick up his mat – is a necessary part of the healing. It demonstrates the totality of his healing. He carries that which had carried him.§

If we as a Church are going to grow in numbers and find new life – if we are going to rise and walk like the paralyzed man – it is going to come with some violation of our own expectations. We’re also going to have to pick up our mat.  God, as it so happens, is not obligated to fulfill our expectations. We are going to have to let certain things go – including things that we hold dear – maybe even things we falsely regard as central to our faith, our mission, or our identity.

Really, these things are idols. Any good thing can become an idol in our heart once we allow it to distract us from God rather than bringing us to God. Our teeth are good for chewing the bread of life. They are good things. But if one of them begins to decay irreversibly, at a certain point, it causes nothing but pain and becomes a hindrance and distraction rather than a help. At this point, the thing to do is extract it.

I know better than to start giving examples. And I know that there are idols in my own heart that need to topple, too. So, let's each of us in our own hearts consider what our own idols may be, which are distracting us from the divinely mandated purpose of evangelizing this nation and growing this Church.

None of us can do everything, of course. But each and every one of us can do something rather than nothing. Maybe some of us are already doing all we can, but let none of us be complacent. Let each of us prayerfully consider what we are doing to help the Lord bring healing and growth to this Church. Let each of us listen in our own hearts to the Spirit’s inspiration guiding us to new life for this Church. Through us, if we will let go of our own will and seek the kingdom of God instead of our own agendas, the Lord will restore the Church’s withered limbs so that she may begin to walk strongly in this nation.

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* Eastern Catholic Statistics

† Rapid Decline of Christianity in the U.S.A. 

‡ Why the Church is growing in Africa 

§ Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 171.1

Thomas of Great Faith

on John 20:19-31

Praise the Lord, who rescues us from our enemies (Ps. 29:2). “Sing psalms to the Lord, you who love him, give thanks to his holy name” (29:5). The maker of all things makes all things new, puts all things to right, turns all things to face him.

Sickness he turns into health (29:3)

Death he turns into life (29:4).

Tears he turns into joy (29:6).

Mourning he turns into dancing (29:12).

He removes our sackcloth and clothes us with joy (29:12).

He takes away fear and grants us peace.[i]

And today, he turns doubt into faith.  

“The lack of faith gives birth to a certainty of faith.”[ii]

Thomas doubts the word of his fellow apostles when they tell him, “We have seen the Lord.” He says that unless he also sees, he will not believe it. Let us not imitate Thomas in this moment, for “blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” (John 20:29).  

Yet, eight days later, on this day, the eighth day of Pascha, Thomas also sees the Lord, who appears among them again in the upper room even though the doors are locked. Jesus says to Thomas, offering himself and his wounds to be touched and probed, “Do not be faithless, but believing” (John 20:27).   

And upon seeing the risen Lord and hearing this, Thomas makes his statement of great faith: “My Lord and my God.” Thomas, if you will notice, is the first person in the gospels – perhaps the first person on this earth – to call Jesus “God” in so direct and unadorned a way.

By the grace of God, “Doubting Thomas” becomes Thomas of Great Faith.

Thomas is the first one bold enough to call Jesus, “God,” but he is not the last. The other apostles, led by Thomas, also begin to call Jesus “God.”

John is clear that Jesus is God. It is John alone who records this episode with Thomas. And, it was John who told us all last Sunday on Pascha, that Jesus is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us and that the Word was in the beginning with God and that the Word was God.

At the Last Supper, “John leaned on the bosom of the Word” and today Thomas touches his side. “The first discovered the depth of theology,” and the other reveals “the mystery of Christ’s resurrection, saying, ‘My Lord and my God.’”[iii] To touch the body of Christ is to touch God and those who do so lovingly come away with an unshakeable faith in him and knowledge of his divinity.

Peter, who was also in that upper room and heard what Thomas said, addresses his second epistle “To those who have obtained a faith… in… our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Pet 1:1). It seems that perhaps even the faith of Peter, whose faith made it possible for him to become the rock upon which Jesus builds his Church,[iv] is inspired by the faith of Thomas, whom we often call a doubter.  

The Lord Jesus can and does take the least and makes of that one the greatest. So, the one apostle who doubts the resurrection most of all, becomes the one whose faith inspires us all.

We all echo Thomas, in a sense, at every Divine Liturgy and at every Compline when we chant the Symbol of Faith and say that Jesus Christ is “true God from true God.” Through this doubter, the Lord reveals to us more plainly than through any other the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Thomas cuts to the chase. Seeing his risen Lord, and seeing the still-present wounds in his body, he cries out, “My Lord and my God.” He sees his God before him… and he believes and he worships him.

But isn’t it remarkable which proofs convince Thomas? Which proofs he demanded? Thomas doesn’t simply want to see that Jesus lives again. He doesn’t simply want to see him and hear him again – or to embrace him. He wants to see and touch the wounds of Jesus. The marks of his death. “He said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe” (20:25). These are proofs not only that Jesus is living, but that he has died. And it is these marks of his death that convince Thomas, not only of the resurrection but also of the divinity of the risen one.

This is somewhat confounding because God does not die – that is, the immutable divine nature does not experience death – and, yet, in looking at and touching the marks of death upon his risen and living Lord, Thomas sees his Lord and his God. And I call that an act of great faith. He sees God in his humanity, which does die. But when divinized humanity dies, it rises again and reveals its divinity to Thomas and to all those who have faith and cry out with him, “My Lord and my God.”

Our Lord and our God has done everything for us – gone everywhere, endured everything. He has made all things new. Touching the body of Christ and the marks of death, Thomas touches the life of all. Beholding the living man, Thomas sees the glory of God.[v]

God is with us, and we must learn to see him with the eyes of faith in our lives and in one another. When we see the wounded, let us realize we are seeing God, as Thomas saw God in the wounded Christ. Let us recognize each other as the same body of Christ that Thomas touches. When we see the sick, the mournful, the depressed, the downtrodden, the fearful, and the doubtful – or when we ourselves endure these things – let us remember Thomas and see God, who is in the midst of us bringing us healing, joy, love, peace, and faith.

Jesus breaks into every dark place – he enters even though the doors are locked – and fills all things with light, for he is “our Light, our Resurrection, and our peace.”[vi]

Nothing will keep the Lord away from us. He did not deem Thomas unworthy for his lack of faith, but “confirmed his faith by showing him [his] pure side and the wounds in [his] hands and feet. He touched them, and when he saw [Jesus], he confessed [Jesus] to be neither an abstract God nor merely human, [but], ‘My Lord and my God.’”[vii] He is the God who is personally with us, who loves us beyond all reason or expectation and who will do anything – whatever is necessary to reach us and unite us to himself. We are not abandoned. He is with us even in our abandonment – abandoned with us. Even the one place we think is defined by his absence – the darkest, deepest recess in hell – he’s there too. He has broken the gates of hell and gone through the doors we locked.

Now, the only thing that can separate me from God is me. We can still reject him and push him away because we are still free. But rather than allowing anything that we suffer to drive us away from God, let us be faithful and realize that mysteriously God is there with us in the midst of everything. With Thomas, let us see divinity even in the marks of death – even in our crosses. With Thomas of great faith, let us cry out, My Lord and my God!

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[i] “Although the doors were closed he appeared to his disciples [and] took away their fear and granted them peace” (Stichera of Thomas Sunday).

[ii] Aposticha of Thomas Sunday

[iii] Aposticha of Thomas Sunday

[iv] Matt 16. John Meyendorff, ed., The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1992), 70.

[v] “For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.” – St. Irenaeus

[vi] Stichera of Thomas Sunday.

[vii] Stichera of Thomas Sunday