“The hour is coming, and now is, when the true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father
seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).
“The
hour is coming, and now is.” This is the first Sunday after Mid-Pentecost, the
mid-point between Pascha and Pentecost, between that day when the Lord breathed
the Holy Spirit upon his apostles for the forgiveness of sins and that day when
the Holy Spirit will descend upon the apostles like tongues of fire so that the
good news will be preached to all nations.
As
we await the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we have not been singing
our hymn to the Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who is
everywhere present and who fills all things, who is the treasury of blessings
and the giver of life, who is the gracious one who dwells within us, cleanses
us of all stain, and saves our souls. This hymn is omitted until Pentecost. In
its place, we sing, “Christ is risen.”
But
we are now more than halfway to that feast of the Spirit’s coming, and on this
day our Lord reminds us that the hour is coming when we will worship in the Spirit.
We have not been praying “Heavenly King…,” but the Spirit of Truth is nonetheless
among us and animates our worship. “The hour is coming, and now is.”
Even
as the Lord Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman – not only before Pentecost but
even before his own death and resurrection – he says that the hour is coming, and that the hour now is. Even then, the Spirit is already present everywhere and
filling everything. Wherever there are blessings, there is the Holy Spirit, the
treasury of blessings. Wherever there is life, there is the Holy Spirit, the
giver of life. Wherever there is mercy and grace, there is the Holy Spirit, the
gracious one, dwelling within us.
The
Samaritan woman – called by tradition in various languages Photini, Svetlana,
Fiona, or Claire – all names which mean “light” – is blessed and enlighted by
the presence of Christ, the Light and by the unseen Holy Spirit, whose grace is the living water Christ promises. She
is blessed, and so the treasury of blessings, the Holy Spirit, is with her.
Mercy
and grace are present also to the Samaritan woman. The Lord shows her mercy and
does not condemn her even as he reveals her illicit union saying “you have had
five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband” (4:18). Origen
observes that her words – “I have no husband” – may be understood as a
confession rather than an obfuscation. He writes, “She already had, as
it were, something of the water that leaps into eternal life since she had said
... ‘I have no husband,’ having condemned herself on the basis of her
association with such a husband.”[i]
She
could have been admitting to Jesus that her union was not lawful – which would
not have been an easy thing to admit in that culture to a strange man. Regardless,
when the Lord rebukes her and reveals the full nature of her wrongs, she does
not deny but admits that what he says is true because she calls him a prophet,
which is to say that his words are the words of God. Clearly, mercy and grace
are with her, and so the Holy Spirit, the gracious one, is with her.
The
humble confession of wrongs always springs from the grace of the Holy Spirit as
from a spring of living water. She says “Lord, give me this water,” and
immediately the Lord provokes her confession – thus giving her the water she
asks for. Immediately, she begins her entrance into eternal life.
It
always begins with confession and repentance – the baptism of repentance – the
baptism in living water – baptism into the death of Christ that we may rise
with Christ. First, by baptism, comes death to the old self, the crucifixion of
the old body of sin. Then comes life in Christ, free from sin, never more to
die. (cf. Rom 6:3-12).
Baptism
is our initiation into the Church. It makes sense, then, that after their talk
of living water that gives eternal life, and after her moment of confession,
the Samaritan woman asks about right worship – whether it is to be offered on Mount
Gerizim as the Samaritans say or in Jerusalem as the Jews say – because worship
is the life of the Church. Jesus of course answers that “true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and in truth.” We are baptized and chrismated once so that
our life of true worship in the Spirit may begin.
Above all, the true worship in Spirit and in Truth that the Lord prophesies is the Divine Liturgy. Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes that our Divine Liturgy “is entirely, from beginning to end, an epiclesis, an invocation of the Holy Spirit” (222). And so, even though we are only halfway to Pentecost, in a way, it is Pentecost at every Divine Liturgy.
Fr.
Alkiviadis Calivas conceives of the Eucharist as a “continuous Pentecost” and
writes that, in the Divine Liturgy, “the Holy Spirit, who is ever present in
the Church, [is] animating and vivifying the Church, transforming the assembly
into the Body of Christ” (181). The Holy Spirit, who is already and always with
us, comes upon us before the gifts to prepare us to receive and become the body
of Christ, the Son of God, in the Eucharist. “In the Eucharist,” Calivas
writes, “we become Spirit-bearers so that we may receive Christ” (182).
Every
blessing offered in the Liturgy only blesses inasmuch as the Holy Spirit – the
treasury of blessings – gives the blessing. Without the grace of the gracious
one dwelling within us, our ceremony would be empty. It would not cleanse us of
our stains and it would not save our souls. “Unless the LORD builds the house, those
who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1). Unless
the Holy Spirit comes upon us in the Divine Liturgy, those who offer it labor
in vain. Thanks (εὐχαριστία ) be to
God the Father, who does hear the prayer of his priests and so does send his
Holy Spirit first upon us and then upon our gifts of bread and wine making them
the precious body and blood of his Son that we may partake of them for the
remission of our sins and for life everlasting (Liturgikon 75-77, 92).
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