Rupert of Deutz' Commentary on John 4:5-42

 Translated by Claude.

He came therefore to a city called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Sychar is itself Shechem, but the error of reading it as "Sichar" crept in through corruption. It is a city of the Samaritans, now called Neapolis. Samaria itself was indeed the royal city, now called Sebaste, but the entire surrounding region also took its name from that city long ago. It was there, namely in Shechem, that Jacob gave the field to his son Joseph when, dying in Egypt, he said to him: "I give you one portion beyond your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow" (Gen. 48:22). In saying that he possessed it by bow and sword, he called justice by the names of bow and sword — the justice by which he, a foreigner and sojourner, merited to be delivered from danger after the killing of Shechem and Hamor in response to the rape of his daughter Dinah (Gen. 34). For he feared, as we read in the historical account, that the neighboring towns and villages might rise up against him on account of the destruction of the allied city; and the Lord did not permit them to harm him. Or certainly it should be understood this way: "I give you one portion which I acquired by my own strength" — that is, by the money which I gained by much toil and sweat. And what he says, "beyond your brothers," shows that he gave it to the tribe of Joseph outside of the lot. Indeed Joseph is buried in that very place and his tomb is seen there to this day.

Near that field the Lord Jesus came. Now Jacob's well was there. That well was famous and well known, both on account of the rarity of springs with a strong or perennial flow of water — of which there is a shortage in most parts of that land, except for cisterns — and on account of the dignity and memory of so great a patriarch. This was especially so where one side inflamed itself against the other — the Jew against the Samaritan — the Jew boasting of the city of David and the temple of Solomon, and the Samaritan, defending himself, consoling his panting poverty by pointing to the ancient patriarchs who had dwelt in those parts (3 Kings 7).

Jesus therefore, wearied from the journey, sat here beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. Here mysteries are already to be sought, for just as the image of the sun is reflected in the well below, so this weariness and sitting of the Lord Jesus points to another weariness and sitting which he was meditating on in the hidden counsel of his divinity. What weariness, then, was he meditating on? He had said earlier to the Jews: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" — and this he said of the temple of his body (John 2). This was indeed going to happen: and with them doing it, Jesus himself was to be wearied by the journey of his humanity through true suffering, true pains, and true death. Then, having ascended into heaven, he was to come to the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph beyond his brothers — that is, leaving the Jews behind, he was to come to the Gentiles, whom God the Father would give him as an inheritance. For he was truly Joseph that growing son, who bore the type of Joseph in name and in deeds. To that his inheritance the Son of God was to come, and after the bitter weariness of death, sitting in great rest at the right hand of the Father, he was to sit above the well of this his inheritance — that is, he was to surpass the whole depth of human desire and philosophical wisdom. For when he demonstrated that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and through the foolishness of the cross confounded and subjugated the wise of this world (1 Cor. 1), and by his fear suppressed the desires of men — what else did he do but sit above the well? Rightly therefore, after saying to the Jews driven from his temple, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up," leaving Judea behind, he sat beside the Samaritans' well — because after he had expelled the Jews from the house and kingdom of God, since they had most wickedly destroyed the temple of his body, and in the agony of death, when he said "I thirst," offered him a drink of gall and vinegar (John 19), leaving to them their deserted house, he came to drink the faith and salvation of the Gentiles and to give them the living water which, flowing from the temple of his body when it was destroyed, the Jews had not permitted to come to them. And when Jesus sits thus, it is the sixth hour — because now, while the Lord of all sits reigning at the right hand of the Father, the sixth age of the world is being dissolved.

There follows: A woman of Samaria came to draw water. This indeed is what the thirsting and parched Gentile world was doing — it ran eagerly to that empty teaching of the philosophers of this world, seeking to satisfy either, according to the Stoics, its curiosity, or, according to the Epicureans, its every desire, hoping to find in those teachings the vein of living waters — that is, hoping to find in them the proclamation of the way to true and supreme blessedness. For what else did people think the academy of Socrates or Plato and the various sects of the other philosophers were, but sources of living waters? Coming therefore to draw water, the Samaritan woman at long last found the Lord sitting beside the well — just as the Gentile world, having long admired its philosophers, at long last heard through the apostles, however reluctantly, the wisdom of God, which is Christ.

Jesus said to her: Give me a drink. His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. That Samaritan woman therefore said to him: How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans. It is not the woman who first addresses Jesus, but Jesus who first addresses the woman; and in asking her for a drink, he declares that he does not regard her, or any human being, as common or unclean — though of course he could not have been ignorant of the same reason that astonished the woman, which the evangelist adds, noting: "For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans." In this a small spark of his condescension shines forth; yet in his judgment the immensity of his grace, which was afterward spread with the same condescension among all the nations, is foreshadowed. For just as he then first addressed that woman who had no access to speech or any kind of fellowship with the Jews — those despisers of all peoples — and deigned first to entreat one who, without her help, could not only have had a drink of water but could have turned the whole well into wine; so his mercy anticipated the merits of all the Gentile peoples who were reckoned as alien and unclean by that chosen people of God, who presumed too greatly on their own merits and the merits of their fathers. And he deigned to entreat them to share himself with them — especially since the Apostle who served as his envoy said: "We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). And in seeking this reconciliation from the Church of the Gentiles, freely and gratuitously acting as an ambassador, he was truly asking her for a drink — for thirsting for her salvation with all the depths of his love, he drew her to himself in great thirst.

Hearing this, those Gentile peoples were filled with more than that woman's amazement and joy, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles (15), where, having read the letter of the apostles, they rejoiced with consolation — namely because they could be saved without circumcision and the other works of the law, by faith in Christ alone.

Nor is it without mystery that his disciples had gone away — of whom it is also said that they had gone into the city to buy food — and the Savior alone spoke with the lone sinner and foreigner. For when the grace of Christ first addressed the Gentiles — when he sent his angel to Cornelius (Acts 10) — the apostles of Christ had gone away and had spoken nothing of the word of salvation to people of that sort. Treating them as outsiders and wishing to incorporate into themselves only the children of the kingdom, namely the Jews, they circled the city as it were, following the Psalmist: "They wandered about to eat, and if they were not satisfied, they murmured" (Ps. 59:15).

So when that woman, astonished, had said: "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?" — Jesus answered and said to her: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, "Give me a drink," you would perhaps have asked of him, and he would have given you living water. The divine wisdom, beautifully divided, now deigns to use the elegance of human eloquence — making a metaphor from the visible water, to whose request the majesty hidden in the flesh had inclined, and gently lifting the woman's mind little by little, inviting her with gentle introduction to ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit.

If you knew, he says, the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, "Give me a drink." The sequence and tenor of the words must be noted carefully. He does not say: "if you knew God" — for not only the Samaritans but many of the Gentiles could know there is one Creator God. But he says: "If you knew the gift of God" — which is nothing other than the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Father and the Son, whom this wretched world did not know before the coming of the Redeemer. Likewise he does not say: "if you knew who says to you, 'Give me a drink'" — for she could know that by sight and hearing, and could point him out sitting beside the well to her Samaritan townspeople. Rather he says: "if you knew who it is that says to you" — that is, what his essence is, how far he differs from other mortals, because he is not only the Son of man but also the Son of God; not only man but also God. And the sense is: if you knew the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; if you had heard the gospel of his name, you would perhaps believe in him and ask of him the gift of God — namely the living water — that is, you would be baptized so that through the grace of the Holy Spirit you might receive the forgiveness of sins. For many already knew God the Father in some fashion, but him who now spoke these words — the Son of God — and the Holy Spirit, they did not know.

This was said in reproach of the Jews, from whom he had just turned away, and knowing them to be unbelievers he had driven them from the temple, foreshadowing what would come: that with them driven out, he would introduce foreigners into the kingdom of God through the regeneration of water and the Holy Spirit — which he stated clearly to Nicodemus shortly afterward. And this is similar to what he says in reproaching the Jewish cities: "If the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes" (Matt. 11:21). For what Truth bears witness concerning this Samaritan woman is to be understood universally of the idolatrous Gentile peoples who, when they merited to hear and know, through apostolic preaching, the gift of God and Christ the Son of God speaking to them through his apostles, repented and asked of the Savior Christ the gift of God — namely the living water, the spirit of the remission of sins — and were baptized in the name of the Trinity, so that from all the Gentiles one Church was made, of which this woman bore the type. And the Truth who bore witness in her person testified that she had sinned not through malice, as did the faithless Synagogue, but through ignorance.

But that woman, still wandering in the carnal sense around the name of the water she had come to draw, said to him: Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle? This woman was erring in the expression "living water," not knowing that the ever-flowing stream of invisible water and the unfailing grace of the Holy Spirit are called "living water" by equivocation of name. But it is worth comparing her objection with the objections of the Jews. Earlier, when he had said something to those asking for signs that seemed impossible to their minds — "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2) — they irreverently objected: "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?" — as if saying "you" — a contemptible man — expressing pride and contempt, with that "you": you then, contemptible man and man to be crucified, will raise it up in three days? But this woman, by contrast, with respectful address offered first — Sir, she says — she does not exhibit hostile mockery but friendly inquiry. Had she not first offered that humble word, addressing him as Lord, we might perhaps think she was simply not going to lend her bucket to a foreign Jew to draw water. But now it is clear that she was not herself despising the Jew; rather she feared being despised by the Jew — since the Jews, having more evident grounds for pride, did not even deign to use the vessels of the Samaritans; whereas the Samaritans, accommodating themselves to their conscience, even if they sometimes consoled themselves with spirited contention, would have been content not to be despised and not to be excluded from fellowship with those who trusted in themselves as the true Israelites.

Again, that Samaritan woman, seeing that no vessel other than her own was at hand for that Jew — namely our Lord — said: Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep — with such depth that you cannot reach it with your hand. For indeed it is deep — forty cubits, from a man's side to the tips of his outstretched fingers. Is not the pride of the Jews farther from salvation than the humble conscience of the Samaritans?

Here and there alike, Truth — the Ruler of justice — dwelling in the temple of his body and weighing in the balance the causes both of words and deeds, came to offer to the Samaritans — or rather to the whole Church of the Gentiles which, as has often been said, this Samaritan woman prefigured — the same water flowing from the temple of his body, not trusted by the Jews. She, not yet understanding this, and supposing that the very water of the Samaritans was being despised with Jewish arrogance by the Savior she did not recognize, said: Where then do you get living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle? As if to say: Is any man from Jerusalem, however great, greater, purer, or more devout than our father Jacob? No! And he — not just any foreigner, but our father, so great, so holy, so pure and dear to God — gave us this well, and he himself drank from it, and his sons, and his cattle. Where then do you, or any Jew, get water that you call living or pure, in contempt of this water as though it were dead or unclean?

It is worth noting that she does not say "who dug" but "who gave us the well" — because, as we read, Jacob is not recorded as having dug the well there, but only as having bought a portion of the field from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem (Gen. 33), which field the evangelist records, from the truth of the ancient history, as Jacob having given to his son Joseph, as said above, adding concerning this well: "Now Jacob's well was there." For every well is a spring, though not every spring is a well. And indeed Abraham and Isaac are read to have dug wells in certain places, several of which the Philistines are reported to have stopped up out of envy, and to have contested some. But this well — over which such great conversation of the Savior with the Samaritan woman takes place — is not recorded as having been dug by Jacob or any of the patriarchs. Rightly therefore she did not say "who dug" but "who gave us the well," perhaps having been bought together with the field itself from the sons of Hamor, considering it sufficient for the defense of this water that so great a patriarch drank from it, and his sons, and his cattle.

In response to this, our Lord, condescending to the woman's slowness of understanding — for he knew he had taken on the teaching of untutored souls — distinguishes in this way between the living water in general, whose variations and kinds she could not perceive, and the living water he had said he could give, and the water she alone knew, by their proper differences:

Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst in eternity. These differences — thirsting again and not thirsting in eternity — differ from each other in contrary fashion, like quenching all thirst and quenching no thirst. These contrary effects can readily be observed in the words of our Lord. For water of the kind this woman had come to draw — namely elemental water — quenches no thirst whatsoever; since whoever drinks of it, once the body has been refreshed, grows thirsty again, clearly showing thereby that it has not resolved the need of his nature. But that water which Jesus gives quenches the eternal thirst of body and soul so completely that the one receiving it need not thirst burning in hell, nor burn thirsting there, but led by the same Lamb who speaks these words, may proceed to the fountains of the water of life (Rev. 7), and, quenching all poverty of body and soul in the draught of eternal blessedness, may not lack (Isa. 58) every good in eternity.

Hence it is added: But the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life. For what is this living water if not that which, as said above, is received in the baptism of Christ — the grace of the Holy Spirit? This water is the Holy Spirit; this water is God. This water in the heart of God the Father is the fountain of life; in the mouth of God the Son it is a river of grace and peace; in the blessed angels it is a torrent of glory; in the elect it is a flood of life. Wherever it is drunk it springs back to its source — the abyss of eternal divinity, deeper than hell, longer than earth, wider than the sea, higher than the sky. There, I say, it springs back; from there it comes; and lifting the soul of the one who drinks it, even if it should descend into hell, springing up into eternal life, it raises it where it shall not hunger or thirst, and the heat and sun shall not smite it (Isa. 49). And before it springs back there, it becomes a fountain in the one who drinks it, and diffusing through the bosom of the heart streams of wisdom and knowledge, filling the whole channel of the soul, and gradually breaking out through the passage of the mouth in the word of life, it irrigates bountifully the neighboring gardens and the distant plots; and such a soul merits to hear: "A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters" (Cant. 4:15). Rightly therefore he said: Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will find in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life.

The woman said to him: Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst and may not come here to draw. Blessed is this foreign woman — or rather blessed is the Church gathered from foreigners, whose type she bears — who will rightly rise up in judgment against that wicked and adulterous generation to condemn it (Matt. 12). "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe," says the Lord, "how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" (John 3). Using the likeness of a earthly temple and earthly construction he had said: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" — and they did not believe he could do the earthly things they alone understood in those words. How would they have believed if he had spoken of heavenly things — if he had said that he could give heavenly life, that he could carry them so that they might spring up into eternal life?

But this woman believed and confessed and did not deny. For this woman said, and this great woman now spread across the whole world says still, breathless and thirsting, thirsting and crying: "Lord, give me this water." She believed; and therefore she also speaks (Ps. 116:10). And so that generation is rightly condemned by comparison with her, as said before.

What then remains — why is so great a good still delayed? He who said this very desirable good was to be asked from him — why does he not grant it immediately to the one who asks so simply, without being asked? Hear what follows.

Jesus said to her: Go, call your husband and come here. See how, without directly pointing to the sinner — whom he knew to have no husband, whom he knew not to have entered into lawful marriage — he calls her back to her own conscience, so that she might see in the testimony of her conscience what she needs to do in order to merit receiving that gift of God. He could have said: "Unless you repent and confess your sins, because you are a sinner and have done thus, unless I say you repent, I will not give you this water" — since indeed this grace of the Holy Spirit, this gift of God, is given to none but those who repent and confess their sins and leave them behind. The Lord could have said this, but the wisdom of God, the Craftsman of our salvation, used its own art — so that it would not afflict her with burdensome shame, and yet would elicit from her the confession of sins necessary for her salvation. Go, he said, call your husband and come here. What would she think, but that her husband needed to be called for this reason — lest a woman receive as it were the faculty of life without her husband — and that it was rightly considered by the Giver of so great a thing that a husband ought to share in so great a gift, seeing that husband and wife are one body? And indeed she would have run at once, if she had had a man she could legitimately call her husband. But what could she do who had no husband, yet was neither a virgin nor a widow? How could she not now fear a deserved rebuff, being compelled by such an admonition to recognize herself as a woman not lawfully married? She stood therefore, acknowledging her own unworthiness, and confessed, saying: I have no husband. This beginning of confession is sufficient for the mercy that calls. He did not wait or demand that she say everything, but stretching out the hand of clemency, he spared her shame and came to the aid of her wavering conscience.

There follows: Jesus said to her: You have said rightly, "I have no husband." For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have truly said. The woman understood this well, because she truly spoke. Well — truly — and now also the Church truly speaks: just as that woman had misused five husbands and now, having none, nonetheless had someone she could not call her husband — so the Church, when she was once among the Gentiles, luxuriating through the five senses of the body in every concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes that is in the world, had at last fallen so far as to receive the devil in place of her lawful husband — in place of God, the maker and lover of souls — and fornicating with wood and stone with him who was not her husband but the enemy of her nature, not a lover but a destroyer, not a bridegroom of love but an author of death, a murderer, not a physician — the devil, not God. This, I say, she truly said. In saying this she spoke the truth; and so, accusing herself from the very beginning, washed in the washing and having received the living water into the cup of salvation —

Therefore the Master and Lord, by this example to be imitated by his disciples — the ministers of this water of life — with fitting art drew from her who was seeking the living water a confession of sins, and recalled her to her conscience by saying: Call your husband and come here. And she did not conceal or defend those sins, but confessed them at once. For how truthfully she agrees with the one recounting them, with what humble conscience she yields to the truth, she shows by her reply:

Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. For what more is it to say "Truly, I have had five husbands" than to say "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet"? It is plain, moreover, how unwillingly she does not make her confession — for she honors with the name of Lord and prophet him who is the examiner of her conscience, for no other cause or proof than that she recognized herself to be a sinner according to the truth of what he had declared. In one and the same answer she both confessed what she was in respect of herself, and declared what she could understand him to be in respect of him. She confessed less — and far less — than he declared; but by confessing as much as she had perceived, she made herself worthy that Jesus should believe her with all that he was.

This should not pass by unnoticed: it is customary rightly to call prophecy not only foreknowledge of future things, but also the revelation of past and present things. This woman had heard the Lord predict nothing concerning the future, but only declaring truly the hidden past and present things of her heart; and sensing this, she declared him to be a prophet. So accustomed was it already then to call the revelation of hidden things "prophecy." Indeed, since prophecy has three parts — that is, concerning the past, the present, and the future — that part bears the greatest weight in confirming a prophetic spirit by which someone is confronted in the present so that the hidden things of his heart are made manifest. For then no doubt is left to a person that in the one prophesying it is God alone who speaks — besides whom no one else can see through the hearts of men. Commending this the Apostle says: "If all prophesy, and some unbeliever or uninstructed person enters, he is convicted by all, judged by all, the secrets of his heart are made manifest, and so he falls on his face and worships God, declaring that God is truly among you" (1 Cor. 14:24–25). So plainly this woman, when she heard from outside, from a man, what she knew within herself, declared with confidence that God was truly in that man; and she said without hesitation: Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Then, knowing that prophets customarily speak through figures and tropologies, she removed the carnal understanding from his words, and no longer, in the same sense as before, seeking living water from him, she intended rather to seek from him, as a prophet, as from one who would not blow himself up vainly with disputes when speaking from his own heart, but through whom — as she had learned by experience — God was speaking, the teaching of truth. For beyond the bodily thirst for which she had come to draw water, she had another thirst — namely the thirst for hearing the word of God — which he who spoke to her, the Waterer of minds, knew exceedingly well. For did he know only her sins, and not also know the desire of her soul and the teachable humility of her heart? Why then had he said to her: "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaks to you, you would perhaps have asked of him and he would have given you living water?" Surely in the language of him who knows all things and sees all things, "perhaps" does not indicate uncertainty, but the admiration of one who affirms — just as in that other place: "If you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also" (John 5:46). For there too he admires the hardness and unbelief of the Jews, and here, in reproach of those same people, the ease of the foreigners in believing.

In this woman therefore he had foreseen also the thirst for hearing the word of God. And this thirst of hers was immediately satisfied once she had found that he was a prophet. For she said:

Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. As if to say: Lord, since I perceive that you are a prophet — and indeed for many days there has been no prophet seen in Israel — speak to us from the mouth of the Lord; give us who consult you the answer of justice in the word of the Lord.

Behold the old and long-standing dispute: You Jews do not share things with us Samaritans; and you do not share things with us because we do not worship in Jerusalem. For you say that only in Jerusalem is it fitting to worship; and against you in this the authority of our fathers resists — which is not lightly disregarded. For our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and undoubtedly, without Jerusalem and without the temple of Solomon, they pleased God whom they worshipped on this mountain. Here, having erected an altar, our father Jacob invoked the Most Strong God of Israel upon it, after he returned from Mesopotamia of Syria and dwelt here near this town and bought the portion of the field in which he had pitched his tent from the sons of the father of Shechem for a hundred lambs (Gen. 33:18–19).

You therefore, Lord, since you are a prophet — what do you say? The woman, wise in her manner of putting the question, was already seeking the living water; she was dipping the bucket of great desire, leaning over the rim of the eternal fountain to draw — and she was to find more living water than she herself could yet estimate. In her very inquiry she does not say everything, yet she sets everything forth. For in mentioning what could make the place venerable — namely that "our fathers worshipped on this mountain" — she kept silent about the causes of the division and separation. She kept silent, that is, about the fact that Jeroboam and the ten tribes with him — to whom the Lord had sworn: "From the fruit of your body I will place upon your throne" (Ps. 132:11) in order that they might depart from Judah and from the house of David (3 Kings 11) — made golden calves and worshipping said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (3 Kings 12). That this happened in the very city of Sychar which Jeroboam rebuilt is told in the history of the book of Kings. Moreover, they had mingled, as said above, with the peoples whom Shalmaneser of the Assyrians, after transferring the ten tribes, had caused to inhabit their land; and each people making its own god, they had learned from their works — and this gave the Jews who despised them yet greater material for contempt (4 Kings 17). Those causes, I say, this woman kept silent about in the question she put forward. Yet she had confessed the stains of her own personal guilt with sufficient humility. It is therefore not a vice but rather a credit to her that she did not hasten to proclaim the common ignominy of her people — well enough known to all.

The Lord however, Judge of equity, when asked, replied thus —

Woman, believe me, for days will come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. These words of the incarnate Word, resounding most sweetly concerning the holy temple of his body and setting forth in brief but weighty expression a true and worthy doctrine concerning the adoration of the Divinity, are to be received with veneration and holy fear. He reasonably establishes that the Samaritans were inferior to the Jews in the past dispute, but he comforts them in turn by indicating that all controversy over the privileges of their respective places is soon to be made obsolete for true worshippers of God. He distributes the words of this consolation at the beginning and at the end, and with wonderful art places in the middle those phrases of his little speech by which he strikes the Samaritans effectively — saying that they worship God without knowledge. For both before saying "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews" and after it, he repeated and continued what he had prefaced, saying: "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth," and so on — taking such care with great condescension to retain the goodwill of his weak audience.

Now the individual words of grace flowing from his mouth are to be examined. Woman, believe me. To you, O woman, he says, I am about to say what I have not yet said to men; I am going to entrust to you what I have not entrusted to the Jews, nor to the scribes and Pharisees or priests who worship — or rather who rob — in that great and beautiful temple of God; and what I signified to them only by deed, when I drove them out of my Father's house with a whip (John 2), but did not yet see fit to open in words — this I now say to you. To you, O woman, I entrust it; commit it to your faith. Only believe me now, for the moment, as you would a prophet — for you have said that I am a prophet; believe me, I say — and I do not yet ask you to believe in me, which will come later, when you begin to perceive something about me that is above a prophet, indeed above every rank and dignity. Believe me in this: that days are coming, and are near at hand, which your fathers who worshipped on this mountain, and many prophets and kings who worshipped in Jerusalem, desired to see and did not see — but your blessed eyes will see shortly after — when you who are now despised as aliens from the temple of God, you I say, and all who from whatever nations are predestined to life (Luke 10), will worship God, calling him Father, that is, confessing and adoring equally the Son whose Father he is, through whose adoration it comes about that God his Father is also your Father. So I say you will worship the Father — not on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in every place that is his — for not only here or in Jerusalem alone, but from the rising of the sun to its setting (Ps. 113) his name shall be great and terrible among the Gentiles (Mal. 1). But in Jerusalem, which is now the celebrated place of prayer, not one stone will be left upon another that shall not be thrown down (Matt. 24).

The woman could already have been rejoicing on behalf of her people, thinking that by the authority of so great a man — whom she believed to be a prophet — the holy city of David and the temple of Solomon would be preferred no more than the mountain of Samaria. Yet although this was true of the future, it was not going to be true of the past. Therefore there was something concerning the sin that had abounded more in Samaria, lest she rejoice inappropriately over the superabundant grace. So there follows:

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. As if to say: You Samaritans — because you withdrew from the house of David and from the temple of God and put your trust in the mountain of Samaria — were not justified by the fact that your fathers worshipped on the mountain (Deut. 11), but were defiled by it, because the one who built this city — that is, Shechem — on the mountain made golden calves and said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." You therefore, who on account of the worship of the calves withdrew from the temple of God and worship idols not knowing what you say — "These are your gods, O Israel" — you worship what you do not know. We Jews, who have remained loyal to our king and worship the God of our fathers in the place he has chosen, not unknowing of what we say but knowing full well, because salvation is from the Jews — for the Savior is from the tribe of Judah and of the seed of David — and knowing this and for this reason cleaving to David, and worshipping God who swore to him, saying: "From the fruit of your body I will place upon your throne" (Ps. 132:11), in the temple which his son built — we worship what we know, reserved for David himself so that out of us might arise the salvation promised to him. But enough of this past dispute over worship: there will come days when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

This is what he repeated in what follows: But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Already the hour has come and now is — the acceptable time, the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2) — when the true worshippers — true, I say, meaning not those who are ignorant of what they worship, but those possessing true knowledge of worship — will worship the Father not on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, as has been said, but in spirit and in truth. What is sweeter, what is more beautiful than this definition of the true worshipper? You will worship, he says, the Father — receiving from him the spirit of adoption as sons and coming into his only-begotten Son. For what is it to worship the Father in spirit, if not to have received the spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry out: "Abba, Father!" (Rom. 8:15)? What is it to worship the Father in truth, if not to remain in his Son — who says "I am the truth" (John 14:6) — and to invoke the Father? It is therefore the same as if he had said: The true worshippers, with the clear and necessary distinction of persons, will worship the one God — Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Why at this point did he place spirit before truth — not saying "they will worship the Father in truth and in spirit" but "in spirit and in truth"? Evidently because just as no one comes to the Father except through the Son (John 14:6), so no one knows him except through the Holy Spirit. For "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3). And true worship itself is the proper work of the Holy Spirit — for "we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Rom. 8:26). Therefore it is necessary that through prevenient grace a person first receive the Holy Spirit, through whom he may acknowledge and confess that the Lord Jesus has come in the flesh — which is the right way of coming to the Father through the Son. Rightly therefore he did not say "they will worship the Father in truth and in spirit" but "in spirit and in truth." Moreover, wherever he invokes this name in the right order and in evangelical tradition, first continuously the Father and the Son and then as the third person the Holy Spirit — evidently on the grounds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both, that is from the Father and the Son.

There follows: For the Father also seeks such people to worship him. Believe me, he says, for the hour has now come and the true worshippers will thus worship the Father. For behold, even now in the present the Father is seeking such people to worship him — he seeks with a lighted lamp, he searches diligently with the house overturned (Luke 15). Behold: he has placed the lamp of his Divinity in the clay vessel of human flesh, and beginning from his sanctuary, has overturned his house by driving out the false worshippers — because they made his house, which is a house of prayer, a den of thieves (Matt. 21) — and from there seeks throughout the whole world true worshippers who will worship him not in the flesh but in spirit, not in robbery but in truth.

The temple and the city of Jerusalem will be overturned (Matt. 24); the sacred groves and shrines of the Gentiles will not stand; families of peoples will be divided against each other, bonds of kinship will be broken, two against three and three against two, daughter against mother and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Matt. 10) — and thus through total upheaval, with the house overturned, the Father will without doubt find those who will worship him. He will not find people already made such who worship him, but will find in the groves and shrines of idols those whom he will make such so that they worship him. For he will find idolaters, the rapacious, drunkards, fornicators, and people obsessed with every other vice — but he will wash them, he will sanctify them in his spirit and in his truth (1 Cor. 6:11). "I will not gather their assemblies of blood," he says, "nor will I remember their names upon my lips" (Ps. 16:4). They were called idolaters and fornicators — but he will call them by another name, in which whoever is blessed will be blessed upon the earth (Isa. 65:15–16).

You ask: why does the Father seek such worshippers — why will we worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem? Hear what follows: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

Although this can rightly be understood as: "the Holy Spirit is God" — where "spirit" is the subject and "God" is the predicate — nevertheless in this place "God" is more rightly understood as the subject and "spirit" as the predicate; and what he said, "God is spirit," means no other than if he had said, "God is spirit" — just as in that passage, "And God was the Word" — we understand nothing other than if it had said, "And the Word was God." For the point here is not directed against those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and who are therefore false and impious worshippers of God the Father — as though to defend the Holy Spirit's proper person as God — but rather it is directed against carnal and blood-soaked worshippers, pointing out that the true God whom they boast of worshipping lawfully is not flesh but spirit, and therefore is not pleased by the eating of bulls' flesh or the drinking of goats' blood (Ps. 50; Heb. 9) — indeed, he is not to be sought in those things but is to be worshipped in the Holy Spirit and invoked in the confession of truth. This he establishes because God is spirit.

For he truly surpasses not only the perception of the body but the subtlety of every spirit — an uncircumscribed Spirit, for he is enclosed in no place, nor, as the Anthropomorphites suppose, is he limited by similarity to human form. He is the Spirit strongest of all spirits and most subtle of all spirits, of which he himself is the Creator — incapable of being contained, yet capable through the subtlety of his nature of being known by rational spirits, that is, both angelic and human. And this is to be understood equally of the whole Trinity, because certainly not only the Holy Spirit but also the Father and Son is spirit; nor is the Holy Spirit called the third person of the Divinity because this person alone is spirit, but because he proceeds from both — from the Father and the Son — and therefore receives this name from both, being called the Holy Spirit. For, as has been said, the Father also is spirit and the Son also is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy — and hence by a composite name he is called the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, because God is spirit, he says, those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth — that is, in the spirit of adoption as sons, crying "Abba, Father!" (Rom. 8:15), honoring the Father in the confession of the Son, as was said above. For it is necessary to open the mouth in the confession of truth and to breathe in the Spirit, and in him to say that Jesus is Lord and to confess that he has come in the flesh (1 Cor. 12:3). Otherwise, "one who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man; one who offers a lamb is like one who breaks a dog's neck; one who presents incense is like one who blesses an idol" (Isa. 66:3). Whether a Jew, a Samaritan, or any schismatic who cuts himself off from the unity of the Spirit — because there is no word of truth in his heart and on his lips (Rom. 10) — that is, because he does not believe in his heart unto righteousness, which is to worship the Father in spirit, and does not confess with his mouth unto salvation, which is to worship him in truth — whether a Jew, a heretic, or a pagan, none of them are in any way numbered among the true worshippers of the Father.

When therefore you say: God once wished to be worshipped by the fathers in flesh and in the blood of burnt offerings and sacrifices; now he prefers to be worshipped in spirit and in truth — did he then seek other or different worshippers than he does now, or does he now require different worshippers than he did then? To this I say: He permitted, but did not command, that he be worshipped through such sacrifices; he permitted, I say, he did not command; he tolerated it, he did not will it. He sometimes accepted what was offered; he never sought what was to be offered.

Long since the Lord has defended his prophets from every such objection. For he says through Jeremiah: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh — for I did not speak with your fathers and I did not command them on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning the matter of burnt offerings and sacrifices, but this was the word I commanded them: Hear my voice" (Jer. 7:21–23). Again through Isaiah: "The multitude of your sacrifices — burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals, and the blood of bulls and lambs and goats — I did not want. When you came to appear before me, who required this from your hands, that you should walk in my courts?" (Isa. 1:11–12).

Therefore the worshippers God seeks now, those he now commands to exist, are the same worshippers that God, who is spirit, always sought — nor did he ever wish to be, or disdain to be, worshipped other than in spirit and in truth. But the children of Israel who came up from Egypt were carnal people, accustomed in the manner of the Egyptians and other nations to add burnt offerings to their sacrifices and to eat the flesh. Moreover, neither had the Spirit been given nor had truth sprung up from the earth in which they might know how to worship as is fitting. He therefore conceded, according to the times and the quality of the people, that worshippers of whatever kind might slaughter and eat the flesh of sacrifices — placing the law about sacrifices on account of transgressions (Gal. 3:19), so that as a tutor he might restrain the petulant adolescent until grace should come; a figure might nourish until truth should shine forth; a shadow might benefit until the clear reality should succeed.

Now the Spirit is given and is near at hand; now truth is present, because "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). Now has come the faith through which Abraham our father proved to be a true worshipper, and that very faith itself is now being sought — the tutor having been removed — the faith that is of spirit and truth, in which Abraham worshipped as has been said, in which all true worshippers must worship. Here "there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal. 3:28) — and indeed, what is now more to the point: there is neither Jew nor Samaritan, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all things in all with his spirit and truth (Col. 3:11).

There follows: The woman said to him: I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes, he will tell us all things. This the woman was turning over in her mind as she remembered what he had said — "Days are coming" — and repeating: "The hour is coming, and now is." Nor was she ignorant that he was speaking of the coming of Christ, in whose days justice and abundance of peace would arise (Ps. 72:7). For the Samaritans received the Law and the Prophets, from whose proclamations they could know that Christ the teacher of justice was to come — first with Moses saying: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers like me, and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to his words which he shall speak in my name, I will be his avenger" (Deut. 18:15–19). Hence she says: I know that the Messiah is coming — understanding that he will teach us by a new legislation, as Moses himself attests in the above passage, saying: "The Lord will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers; listen to him as you listen to me." When he comes, she says, he will tell us all things.

Note that the phrase "who is called Christ" was not said by the woman but was inserted by the evangelist to interpret the Hebrew name — since "Messiah" in Hebrew means "Christ" in Greek, and in Latin means "anointed," anointed with the fullness of royal and priestly grace above his companions (Ps. 45:7) — that is, above all the sons of men. For "God does not give him the Spirit by measure" (John 3:34). When he comes, she says, that one will announce all things to us. See how she probes what she has heard, how she pretends not to have heard it in order to hear it again. For she says she knows that he will come and that the Messiah is to come, but pretends not to have heard that the hour has already come and now is — in order to hear it again. So by thus sparing her mouth she knocked more effectively, in modest rather than importunate inquiry. For he himself says: "Everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened" (Matt. 7:8; Luke 11:10). Did not the Jews earlier ask and knock, saying: "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" (John 2:18) — and they did not find, nor were they worthy to hear openly? Because they asked not in faith but faithlessly, not modestly but importunately. But this woman asked humbly, petitioned faithfully, knocked modestly.

So there follows: Jesus said to her: I am he, the one speaking with you. I, he says, who am speaking with you am that Messiah; I will announce all things to you. See how he entrusted himself to this foreigner, to whom he had not entrusted himself to the Jews — showing to her the treasure of his honored name, which in his own homeland, in Judea, he had kept hidden lest soon, as was to happen, those swine trample underfoot the precious pearl of his name and gnaw at this holy thing with their dog-like fury (Matt. 7:6). For this was done in reproach of his homeland, in which — as the evangelist will say shortly after — he declared he would have no honor. Correspondingly, in the land not his own, the Gentile world, he was to be honored not only as a prophet but as God, the Son of God, with divine honor — which is already being demonstrated in the present moment. For he was honored by these Samaritans when he said he was Christ; he was dishonored and crucified by his own people, among whom he also performed signs such as no one else had done (John 15).

There follows: And immediately his disciples came and marveled that he was speaking with a woman. Yet no one said: "What do you seek?" or "Why are you speaking with her?" This miracle the Lord Jesus then began to perform for his disciples in the fact that he, born of Jews who did not share with Samaritans, deigned to enter into conversation with a Samaritan woman; he completed it after his resurrection, when through Peter's ecstasy, with animals and reptiles and serpents shown to him and the words "Kill and eat" spoken, and "What God has cleansed, you must not call common or unclean" (Acts 10), he showed that no human being is to be called common or unclean. And then, showing reverence to him as to their Master and Lord, they fell silent, and none of them said: "What do you seek?" or "Why are you speaking with her?" But when the grace of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the nations, when the Holy Spirit had fallen upon Cornelius and the other Gentiles who were hearing the word while Peter spoke, and they were speaking in tongues and glorifying God (Acts 10), then indeed the great woman — namely the Church of the Gentiles, signified by this Samaritan woman — was defended by great testimony; so that they feared, with Peter saying: "Who was I, that I could withstand God?" and glorified God, saying: "So then, God has granted repentance that leads to life even to the Gentiles" (Acts 11:17–18). For who would dare say to Christ or to his Spirit: "Why did you enter with men who are uncircumcised?"

The woman therefore left her water jar and went into the city and said to those people: Come and see a man who told me all that I have ever done. Can this be the Christ? In this woman it was prefigured with great elegance how the prophet's own homeland — that is, the Church of the Gentiles — was to honor him. When she heard him say "I am Christ, the one speaking with you," she immediately forgot, in the joy of the living water she had found, the thirst for which she had come to draw water; she left her jar behind so that she could run more freely; and she threw the whole city into excitement by crying out what manner of man she had found and what she had heard from him. For when the primitive Gentile Church heard the name of Christ, it at once forgot to provide for the flesh and its concupiscences (Rom. 13:14), threw aside the desire or curiosity which empty philosophy (Col. 2:8) or the pleasures of transitory things had kept it busy enough filling, and laying down every burden, carrying the name of Christ alone in its heart and on its lips, filled the whole world with the cry of good news, inviting all to believe, hastening to generate a multitude of spiritual children.

And indeed at first only a very few were astonished or paid any attention to the fact that that woman, in the haste of her happy joy, had left her jar behind. But when our mother the Church, who was the first to merit finding Jesus outside and, with the apostles entering — indeed with certain ones from among the circumcised believers even being indignant at her grace (Acts 11) — received his spirit, then it immediately threw off every burden of the world so completely that a great miracle was wrought for all lovers of the world, all powers of the age, kings, judges, nations, and especially her own kinsmen and relatives according to the flesh. Not only was it a miracle to all, but to the greater part — indeed to the whole diabolic city, whose head was Rome, whose horn of pride was Nero at that time — it was a cause of fury, occasion of tumult and anger, incitement to the most savage persecution. By every punishment and by the total shedding of blood they tried to force her to take back the jar she had cast away. The power of the living water prevailed, soothing the flesh overcome with sweet intoxication and making the mind rejoice — so that not only did they no longer desire to drink from that jar, but the souls themselves, those vessels of clay, utterly renounced their very bodies. In this way the multitude of the martyrs was crowned.

Meanwhile, with the cry not ceasing — "Come and see the man; believe in Christ, the Son of God, true God and true man" — the wicked citizens of the devil's city came out and became good citizens of the city of God. Hence there is added:

They went out of the city and came to him. This too is in reproach of his homeland. For his own people and the chief priests drove him out to Pilate, outside the city, and he suffered outside at the hands of those who had seen many and great signs he had performed (Heb. 13:12–13). But these foreigners and strangers, who had not heard a single word from him, still less seen any signs — these I say, for this reason alone, that they had heard from one woman who said: "He told me all that I have ever done," came out of their city with great honor for him and came to him. All the more so now, when he has been dishonored by his aforesaid homeland even to the end — even to death, the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). We, who have not seen him but have only learned in the hearing of the ear — as the Apostle says, Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood (Heb. 13:12) — we go out to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. Now, I say, greater reproach must rightly be laid upon the wicked and justly condemned tenant farmers, who drove out the Lord of the vineyard — their Lord — outside the vineyard and killed him (Matt. 21; Luke 20), and for this reason the kingdom of God was rightly taken away from them and given to the nation — that is, to the Gentile world — that produces its fruits. For out of the city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt (Rev. 11:8), or Babylon the harlot, the city of the devil which always opposes the heavenly city of God the New Jerusalem, the people of God have come out weeping and confessing that they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth (Heb. 11:13), crying out to one another: "Let us go out to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come" (Heb. 13:13–14).

Meanwhile the disciples asked him, saying: Rabbi, eat. But he said to them: I have food to eat that you do not know of. It was a feature of Jewish superstition that the disciples of Jesus marveled at him — that he was speaking with a Samaritan woman — and yet offered him the food they had bought from the Samaritans to eat. This may have been a carnal, or at any rate a somewhat supercilious, justice of the scribes and Pharisees: that they might buy things from foreigners but would by no means accept food or drink prepared or served by them.

This cannot be omitted, for the sake of which all these events were done or written, as has been said: namely that the scribes and Pharisees, who despised the Gentiles and nearly all the Jews hated their salvation, nevertheless rejoiced that kings and princes often considered the temple worthy of the highest honor and adorned it with great gifts, and sometimes even provided from their revenues expenses pertaining to the ministry of sacrifices. In this they rejoiced — while holding hands defiled with the blood of Christ and offering such sacrifices — and yet the faithful who were of the circumcision still argued with the Gentiles about their privilege, contending that only the conversion of Jews, as it were clean food, should be offered to Christ, while regarding the Gentiles as unclean four-footed animals of the earth, as was shown to Peter in his vision (Acts 10), and considering them unworthy. Meanwhile, when certain ones of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up saying that not only circumcision but the whole law of Moses must be observed (Acts 15) — what else were the disciples of Jesus doing but offering him unwelcome food, saying: "Rabbi, eat"? But he cries out against this in the Psalm: "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Never. I will not accept a calf from your house, nor goats from your flocks, for all the wild beasts of the forest are mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and the beauty of the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness is mine" (Ps. 50:13, 9–12). But what then? "Offer to God a sacrifice of praise" (Ps. 50:14). Of this true sacrifice and food truly suitable to him he immediately says: "I have food to eat that you do not know of."

For truly they did not know that, with the various foods and drinks and baptisms and carnal ordinances cast aside (Mark 7), the true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit and truth — which truly is the true sacrifice of praise offered to God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They did not know this, I say — for the Lord had said this to the Samaritan woman in their absence, not in their presence. Hence, marveling, they said to one another: "Has someone brought him something to eat?" In the same way they were darkened in carnal sense by his words when he said: "I have food to eat that you do not know of" — just as the Samaritan woman was, when he spoke to her of the living water to be asked for or given. It is no wonder therefore that she hesitated at the word "water," when these men were no quicker to understand at the word "food."

It is truly worth noticing with admiration in this the wonderful condescension of the wisdom of God, which so stoops to little ones that it never fails, whatever occasion presents itself, to display before their eyes by its similarity the invisible mysteries of the kingdom of God, by way of introduction. For what does it omit? Neither the wedding banquet of kings, nor the nets of fishermen, nor the pearls of merchants (Matt. 13), nor the old wineskins (Luke 5), nor fig trees (Mark 11) nor vineyards, nor a grain of mustard seed (Luke 17) — and certainly does not pass over, among minor things, garden herbs. So from individual things it unfolds the likenesses of heavenly things for carnal minds, so that in familiar and common mirrors they may see, as it were, the image of the sun — those who cannot endure its splendor with their weakened eyes. So now he spoke to the woman drawing water under the name of water about the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that from the usefulness of the visible water she was drawing she might weigh the power of the invisible water she did not know. Similarly, to those offering food, he speaks of incorporeal things under the image of bodily food, so that from the likeness of bodily refreshment he might show that it is willing — indeed gladly desired by him — to work the work of our salvation.

Because they did not notice this from his first statement — for they said: "Has someone brought him something to eat?" — he immediately continued and added: "My food is to do the will of my Father and to perfect his work." By this saying he manifestly declares how spontaneous and willing is his obedience in working our salvation to God the Father, and that he delights in this obedience more than a hungry person delights when food is placed before him and he is told: "Eat." And rightly he delights more. For by bodily food only the flesh, which had grown weak, is refreshed — only to weaken again; but this obedience was such that even the passible human nature in Christ, being refreshed, would rise from the dead never to die again: "death will no longer have dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9).

For what is the will of the Father if not that of which he said a little earlier to the Samaritan woman: "The Father seeks such people to worship him"? What does the Father will and seek if not to have true worshippers who will worship him in spirit and in truth? But such worshippers were found through the passion of the Son; such worshippers were acquired for God the Father through the cross and blood of the Son. When therefore he says: "My food is to do the will of my Father," this — as has been said — magnificently expresses through a fitting likeness how great is the desire with which he is intent upon completing the work of our salvation.

And indeed it is established that holy men who have received the spirit of adoption as sons (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5) work the work of fraternal salvation with great sweetness of love — even if they begin from servile fear, they are brought to perfection in the love of sons, which is, according to the Psalmist, to run with an enlarged heart in the way of the Lord's commandments (Ps. 119:32). Yet none of them can so rightly say: "My food is that I do the will of God" — for no one has anything impassible in the substance of man, by reason of which he could say that toil or affliction in the work of God is so delightful to him as to be called his food. For man consists of both soul and body, and both without doubt are passible. And therefore when someone bears tribulation patiently and is comforted by the sweetness of his own conscience — because he lives piously in Christ (2 Tim. 3:12) — he cannot yet rightly be said to be eating his food, because it is not yet the reward of the work itself that refreshes him, but only the hope of a reward laid up elsewhere that consoles him, lest he fail or weaken under the force of tribulation by which he is wholly — that is, in soul and body — oppressed.

But Christ was not entirely passible; he consisted not only of soul and body, which were then both passible, but also of his impassible divinity. And when he underwent the bitter passion of death by doing the will of the Father, the force of pain did not pierce through the whole that Christ is — his divine and human nature together — but the human nature was tormented with true pain, while the divine nature fed with his Father upon that charity by which it always feeds. It fed, I say, and was satisfied by the reproaches — not as the holy martyrs rejoice in the hope of a reward yet to come, but as the God of all martyrs and saints, in the eternal and unchangeable presence of the reality itself. For what did he ever hope for, what did he ever not have, he through whom all things were made, the Son of God? Was he ever a hired worker? Did he preach the gospel in hope of a reward? Did he ever say anything like what the apostle Paul said: "Necessity is laid upon me; for woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. If I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a stewardship" (1 Cor. 9:16–17)? And therefore it is never said of him that he received a reward, as it is customarily said of all the saints to whom God repaid the reward of their labors (Wis. 10) — because he himself is the rewarder and reward of all the saints, sitting at the right hand of the Father, where, although the human nature is crowned with glory and honor it did not have before (Ps. 8:5), yet the nature of the Divinity which elevated that nature holds us rightly in such reverence that we rightly confess: Christ the Lord, whatever he received according to his human nature, received it not from elsewhere but from the divinity innate in him — and therefore it is not right to say that he was given it as a reward.

Therefore all the saints, for as long as they sojourn here until the end, building one another up — where they fast with groaning, absent from the banquet of divine vision — however willingly and with however great a love they work what is good toward all (Gal. 6:10), whether unwillingly, for the sake of an entrusted stewardship, or willingly and therefore having a reward laid up with God (1 Cor. 9:17) — none of them can rightly say: "My food is to do the will of God." But he alone — who hoped for his reward not from elsewhere but had it in himself, as the prophet says: "Behold, his reward is with him and his work is before him" (Isa. 40:10) — he alone, I say, who was already in his work being fed by his divinity, could truly say: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to perfect his work." For the Son of God, impassible in his divinity, even in the passion of the flesh which he assumed by the will of the Father — while he perfected his work, the work of our redemption, the work of our salvation — was fully and perfectly delighting together with his Father in the fullness of love on our behalf. Our own good works too, of whatever kind — our faith and love and the rest — are now for the present his food; but afterward our food will be the vision of him, when he fulfills what he deigned to promise: "that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom" (Luke 22:30). Hence it is said in order in the Apocalypse: "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20). For we feed him as often as we do his will — until he himself, who is head over all the members of the Church which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all, may be fulfilled (Eph. 1:22–23). For just as an emperor is fulfilled when his army daily increases and new provinces are added and the multitude of peoples grows, so too our Lord Jesus is filled in this — that all believe in him and come to faith in him day by day — he himself is fulfilled in all; and all who do this will of the Father together with him feed him and, according to another evangelist, cause him to advance in age and wisdom and grace not only before God but also before men (Luke 2:52).

But why did he now for the first time make mention of this food? For if he had been accustomed up to this point to speak of these things to his disciples when they offered him food, they would certainly not now have erred in his words, saying: "Has someone brought him something to eat?" Why then did he now for the first time say: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me" — if not because the time and place now called it forth, with the foreigners — the Samaritans — going out of the city and coming to him? Toward them and toward all the nations, this was the will of the Father: that through the work of the Son they should become his true worshippers. The Son was rejoicing in that food of his — in that will of the Father — that his homeland, in which he was to be dishonored, the Jews, to whose loss that food — namely the salvation of the Gentiles — was being prepared, those same Jews, the false worshippers, to be driven out with the temple destroyed and the city of Jerusalem overthrown, he had wept for with human feeling (Luke 13:34). And so when he saw the Samaritans going out and coming to him while he remained in the same place, he continued in the metaphor of harvest, rejoicing like a wealthy man to whom a ripe harvest promises abundant food, as follows:

Do you not say that there are still four months and then the harvest comes? Behold, I tell you: lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are already white for harvest. We did not know until now at what time the Lord, having left Judea as said above after ascending to Jerusalem at the approach of the Passover feast, returned to Galilee and, passing through Samaria, did and said the things recorded in the present reading of the Gospel. But now, from the fact that he says: "Do you not say that there are still four months and the harvest comes?" — from this, I say, we gather that he made this journey around the month we call February. For the month we call May is the time of full harvest in those regions. Hence at the feast of Weeks, which is also called Pentecost, two new-offering loaves — two tenths of an ephah of fine flour, as first fruits from all your dwellings — were by law to be offered (Lev. 23; Num. 28; Deut. 16). Therefore, from when the Lord turned water into wine at Cana of Galilee until now when he returns again to Galilee, one year has passed — the thirty-first year of his age — with John still alive, of whom it was said above that he was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, where also there arose a dispute between his disciples and the Jews about purification (John 3). But when or at what time of the following year John was arrested or how long he was kept by Herod, we have no certainty, since we cannot gather it from the Scriptures.

Let us now return to the order of exposition. Do you not say, he asks, that there are still four months and then the harvest comes? So, as if wishing to refute them, he sets it forth under the form of a question, like one arguing more sharply — as though apart from his own spiritual harvest he knows no other harvest at all. And indeed he judges no other harvest worthy of mention in connection with himself or his disciples — even though it is through him, through whom all things were made, that this too happens: that that harvest of which he was speaking comes forth in its due seasons each year. For if for the sake of the Gospel he commands that father and mother and brothers and sisters be forgotten and left behind, for whoever wishes to be worthy of him (Matt. 10; Luke 9), lest the affection of the flesh slow him down in his heavenly intent — how much more for the same reason and zeal did he rightly not wish or allow his disciples to know or remember when that harvest would come? For it would certainly ripen neither more slowly because they kept silent about it nor more quickly because they spoke of it. For we truly cannot otherwise say: "Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20), unless we are so occupied with heavenly meditation that we have no leisure to think or speak of earthly things — so intent on the farming of God that we consider it superfluous to speak of the natural increase of earthly farming — so eager to do the will of God that we neglect the food of the body. Rightly therefore, as if rebuking them: "Do you not say that there are still four months and the harvest comes?"

And immediately he adds: "Behold, I tell you: lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are already white for harvest." Lift up your eyes, he says — the eyes of the inner man — away from this harvest which I did not come to eat, for which I did not hire you as workers; and see not one region, not Judea alone, my homeland, in which I am not going to have the honor of Lord or owner — but see many regions, the regions of all the nations — how white they are already for harvest! For just as the foods of their lords are at hand when those same regions are white for reaping the harvest, so to me — to whom the nations were given as an inheritance at the Father's request (Ps. 2:8) — the abundant food that I have to eat is now readily at hand when the nations themselves are tractable and ready to receive the faith.

It is to be noted that in the Lord's discourses two harvests are found. One is that of which he now speaks — namely the preaching of the Gospel, whose reapers are the apostles (Matt. 9; Luke 10). Another is that of which the same Lord speaks elsewhere, which he also calls the consummation of the age, whose reapers are the angels (Matt. 13). Though they differ in many ways, they also manifestly differ in this: that the harvest he calls the end of the age is only a harvest, whereas the former, in another respect, is called a sowing. For it is called a sowing with respect to the future harvest — that is, the consummation of the age. For just as a man, the master of a household, sows good seed in his field, and while men slept an enemy oversowed weeds, and both are left to grow until the harvest, and then the weeds are bound in bundles to be burned while the wheat is gathered into the barn — so the Son of God, preaching the Gospel, made sons of the kingdom of God, among whom, with the devil oversowing, the sons of wickedness spring up together. But at the end of the age, through the ministry of angels, they will be gathered and the wicked will be separated from the good, as weeds from wheat.

And this same Gospel preaching of an earlier time is called a harvest with respect to what came before it — when the holy patriarchs and prophets went forth weeping and cast their seeds (Ps. 126:6). For just as the joy of reapers is sweeter than the toil of sowers by so much, the blessedness of the apostles — who saw and heard Christ present and speaking, and so announced him to us — was far fuller and more joyful than the blessed hope of the patriarchs and prophets, who prefigured or foretold the one who was to come. And in this harvest, chaff is carried together with the grain to the threshing floor (Mal. 3:12); but in that other harvest the Lord of the harvest will hold his winnowing fork in his hand and will clear his threshing floor, consigning the chaff to unquenchable fire while gathering his pure wheat into his barn (Matt. 3:12).

Therefore when he says "the regions are already white for harvest," it is the same as if he had said: "They are already teachable and ready to receive the preaching of the Gospel." Of this harvest he also says elsewhere: "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest" (Luke 10:2). He wished his disciples to be the workers of this harvest, and roused them to this work when he said: "Lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are already white for harvest." He then added:

And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life. The Lord of the harvest lays down a fair law for his reapers. The worker who reaps, he says, for his labor both receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life. First he receives wages and then gathers fruit for eternal life. This wage is indeed that of which he also says elsewhere: "In whatever house you enter, stay there, eating and drinking what they provide, for the worker deserves his wages" (Luke 10:7). This food law the most robust reaper Paul defended — though he himself chose not to exercise this right, lest he give any offense to the Gospel of Christ (1 Cor. 9:12): "Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating its fruit? Who tends a flock without drinking some of the milk? Does even the law say this? For it is written in the law of Moses: 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain'" (1 Cor. 9:7–9). And then: "If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? Do you not know that those who work in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living by the Gospel" (1 Cor. 9:11–14). Thus the Lord ordained that those who announce the Gospel should live from the Gospel. Therefore he who reaps both now receives wages — namely the necessary sustenance of the present life — and gathers fruit for eternal life, that is, also receives in eternity the eternal reward, each according to his own labor (1 Cor. 3:8). Otherwise the truth of God would not stand firm, nor would the promises to the fathers.

Hence the same likeness already proposed is continued further: For in this is the word true, that one sows and another reaps — so that both the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. In this, he says, the word is true; in this the truth of God abides; in this the promises of the fathers are confirmed — because the seed of the regions that are, as I said, already white for harvest — that is, the blessing of all the nations who already have present in my coming this same blessing — another once sowed, while another now reaps. For what is this word if not what was said to Abraham, to Moses, and to all the holy prophets: that in their seed all the nations would be blessed? (Gen. 12:3). And in what is this word true, if not in the fact that as it was promised to them and believed by them, so with my coming it has been fulfilled? For they, believing and hoping, and in their believing and hoping committing their faith and hope into the propagation of their flesh as into good soil of the grace of God, sowed — going forth and weeping and casting their seeds (Ps. 126:6) — in weeping and sowing professing that they were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth (Ps. 119:19) and had here no lasting city but sought the city that was to come (Heb. 13:14). In this way, having endured the laborious winter, they sowed and did not reap. For indeed they all died without receiving the promises, but having seen them from afar and greeted them — and behold, now others are reaping, namely you who have present the fulfillment of the promises that were made to them. They did not reap, I say; they did not receive the promises — God having provided something better for you, so that they would not be made perfect apart from you. This is what follows:

So that both sower and reaper may rejoice together (Heb. 11:40). Hence, blessing them, he immediately adds:

I sent you to reap what you did not sow. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. This statement agrees with that in which the same Savior says: "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many kings and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it" (Luke 10:23–24). Truly blessed were the eyes of the disciples who now saw the regions — that they were already white for harvest — who heard that they had been hired for this work, to reap what others had sown. I sent you, he says, to reap what you did not sow. That is: I chose you and appointed you for this — that you should go and bear fruit, fruit that you did not sow. Did you suffer such things as Abraham and the other fathers who sowed endured? Did you leave your land and your kindred and sojourn as strangers and guests in a foreign land in this hope — that by sowing, outside your city and home, a harvest might spring up for you: the blessing by which all the families of the earth are blessed? (Gen. 12:1–3). Did you have knowledge or prophecy, or did you sow the seed of this blessing by prophesying? That is not so. But others have labored and you — unlettered and uneducated men (Acts 4:13) who until now did not know the field of God by word or deed — have entered into their labor, so that what was sown by them may be carried through you into the barn — that is, the blessing of all the nations that was promised to them may be proclaimed by you as fulfilled and announced through the whole world.

There follows: Now many of the Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the word of the woman bearing witness: "He told me all that I have ever done." This passage is to be compared with the one mentioned much earlier: "When he was in Jerusalem at the feast" — that is, in his own homeland, among his own people — "many believed in him, seeing the signs he was doing" (John 2:23). Here too, the evangelist says, many believed in him — and he added the causes, which were very different. Those, he says, believed in him seeing the signs he was doing; these on account of the word of the woman bearing testimony. This is to be read altogether as a reproach of the Jews — as also is that which the Apostle says: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom" (1 Cor. 1:22). Because the Jews, seeking the vanity of signs, were deceived; but the Gentiles, delighted by the reasonable word of wisdom, willingly gave their assent to the truth.

What if he had turned water into wine before them, or done among them such things as he did many times in his homeland — in Galilee or throughout Judea — if he had gone around their villages and cities teaching? That is not what he had commanded his apostles when sending them out to preach: "Go not into any road of the Gentiles," he said, "and enter no city of the Samaritans" (Matt. 10:5) — evidently lest he give the Jews a seemingly reasonable cause to despise the Gospel, which had been sent to them as the word of salvation. Hence it is no wonder that some Samaritans afterward were so offended that on a certain day they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem — though not all of them were inhospitable even to his disciples. For the evangelist says: "They went to another village" (Luke 9:56). In the end, the Jews let no occasion for blasphemy pass, however slight. For when they had begun to say tauntingly that he was a Samaritan (John 8) — because he had spoken with them and stayed among them now for two days before, when John had been arrested and he had taken up the public office of preaching — how much more, if by preaching and working miracles among them he had stayed together with his disciples, would he have given them an apparently legitimate occasion to despise the Gospel?

What then — how great a harvest from the Gentiles, do you think, would he have gathered if at that time he had resolved to preach in person to the Samaritans and other peoples? For this reason, when reproaching the cities of his homeland, he could say of Samaria too the same as he said of Tyre and Sidon: that if the miracles done in you had been done in Samaria, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes (Matt. 11:21). Therefore, because they believed in him not on account of signs — none of which they had seen — but on account of what has been said, hear what follows:

When the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to remain with them, and he remained there two days. And this, like the rest, is manifestly said in comparison with Jerusalem (John 12). For when he entered the city of his own accord (Matt. 21) and taught in the temple, and many believed in him (Luke 19) seeing the signs he was doing, "Jesus did not entrust himself to them" (John 2:24). This is certainly to be known: that he was of such great poverty and had flattered no one, that in a great city he found no host and no lodging, but lived in the small village at the house of Lazarus and his sisters — in Bethany, which was their hamlet — already at that time experiencing in reality what was to come: that in his own homeland, of which that city was the capital, he would have no honor. For in that city and homeland of his, foxes had their dens and the birds of the air had their nests — that is, the malicious and pride-winged evil spirits had filled the lodgings of unbelieving minds and dwelt in those lairs — and the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head (Matt. 8:20) — that is, there were none to whose faith he could commit the name or mystery of his divinity. And for this reason in that same city, where were the holy places of his homeland, he never deigned to stay as a guest even for a single night. But the Gentiles, once they heard his Gospel, were able to drive out those foxes and birds from their dens and nests — that is, from their hearts, temples, and altars — and so at last prepare a resting place for the head of the Son of Man; and it is for this reason that he now deigned to stay among those foreigners in this order — and indeed in this prefiguration.

He remained with them two days — evidently, imparting to his Church the two commandments of love, he remains always both in the present and the future age, and in both ages, as in two complete days, his grace will not fail those who believe.

And many more believed because of his word, and they said to the woman: It is no longer because of your word that we believe, for we ourselves have heard and know that this is truly the Savior of the world. Not in vain did the evangelist, whose purpose is to write the more sublime things, pursue these events — which seem more minor — so diligently. Above he said that many believed because of the word of the woman; now: "It is no longer because of your word that we believe." He took care to write both — that they believed on account of her word, and that they said they now no longer believed on account of her speech. Why this, if not because they first heard of him through the woman, but lest they seem to be led by fickleness and carried about by every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14), they carefully examined the words of the Savior himself by the judgment of their own reason? Why then do we believe, if no longer on account of your speech? For we ourselves have heard and know that this is truly the Savior of the world.

Truly to be noted is the all the more rational swiftness of the foreigners in believing. They claim to know and believe not on account of the woman's word, nor because they saw signs. But: we have heard, they say, and we know. What did they hear but a word from his mouth, but speech from his gracious lips? What did they hear but truth and gentleness and justice, by which his right hand leads wonderfully (Ps. 45:4)? They heard the truth of him who teaches, the gentleness of him who invites to believe, the justice of him who does not accept persons — judging no one contemptible as unclean, from whatever nation — as he shows in the very fact of not spurning even the Samaritans. This matter, then, made manifest to us, is entirely fitting for us — for us, I say, who have not seen but: "we have heard and know that this is truly the Savior of the world."

Does not the Savior himself attest the hardness of his homeland against us and say: "A people I did not know has served me; as soon as they heard me, they obeyed me" (Ps. 18:43–44)? Is not that homeland now, just as God predicted through Moses (Deut. 31), beginning to be provoked to jealousy by a non-nation, and being moved to anger by a foolish nation (Rom. 10:19)? For they have begun greatly and maliciously to be angry with the foreigners, saying to them: not only the Savior of God, but also of the Gentiles (Rom. 11:11) — not of the Jews alone but of the whole world — as the Samaritans now confess. Are we not blessed, as he says: "You are a Samaritan and you have a demon"? (John 7:48; 8:48). But let them be jealous as much as they wish; let them be angry and curse as much as they have conceived out of hatred of us. For he whom we have not known according to the flesh rests with us according to the spirit, and will remain with us for two days — in the present and in the future age — and has laid his head, because we heard and believing by hearing we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.

And our woman — the Church — truly sang a true song to him at the well where she received living water, where she left her water jar and poured out her pleasures — indeed even her blood — a true song to him, singing: "I have found him whom my soul loves; I will hold him and bring him into my mother's house, into the chamber of her who bore me. There you will teach me the precepts of the Lord" (Cant. 8:2). For truly the multitude of our martyrs who went out from the city of the devil — leaving all things, despising even their bodily life — have now brought him into their mother's house, into the chamber of their mother, by drawing his name and worship into the common assembly and ritual of the Gentile world — into the very inner sanctuaries of the temples where the crowd of evil spirits had lain with her — and by crying out, bearing testimony, and dying, prevailed in having those spirits driven out so that he might be received.

 CONTINUE