Come – and listen to Him!..

Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh

When the Samaritan woman came back in haste to her town and called all those who lived around her to see Christ, she said: ‘Come! Here is a Man who has told me everything I have done!’ And the people flocked around, and listened to what Christ had to say.

At times we think, how easy it was for this woman to believe and how easy it was for her, from within this shattering experience to turn to others and say: Come! Listen to one who has spoken as no-one else has ever spoken, One Who, without a word of mine has seen into the depth of my heart, into the darkness of my life, has seen and known everything.

But is it not something that can happen to each of us? Christ did not tell her anything very singular. He told her who she was, what her life had been, how God saw her. But this He can tell us every day of our life, and not in a mystical experience, not as it happened to some saints, but in the simplest possible way. Paul describes by calling us to reach the fullness of the stature of Christ, to be human as He was, in the same way as Christ is true man, fulfilled by total final, full communion with God.

So let us learn from this woman that we have turned, all of us, to so may ways in which we could receive the message of this world and be filled, and we have all discovered that nothing can fill us, because man is too deep for things material, too deep for things psychological, too vast – only God can fill this vastness and this depth. If we only could realise this, we would be exactly in the position of the woman of Samaria. We need not meet Christ at the well. The well, indeed, is the Gospel, the place from which the water of life may gush – but not a material well, that well is a symbol. The water which we are to drink is different.

And so, let us emulate this woman, let us come to our senses, let us realise that all we have been wedded to was not our fulfilment; and let us then ask ourselves “Who am I, with regard to myself in the dimension of God’s vision?” And then we can go to others and say: I have met someone who has held a mirror before my eyes, and I have seen myself as I am, He has told me about myself: come and see! Come – and listen to Him!.. And others will come, others will listen, and then they will turn to us and say: It is no longer your testimony that makes us believe – we have seen for ourselves, we have heard for ourselves, we know for ourselves: we believe! Amen.