SUNDAY MESSAGE (audio message)
BY HIS EMINENCE THE METROPOLITAN
KYTHIRA & ANTIKYTHIRA SERAPHIM
SUNDAY OF SAMARITAN
(5th Sunday after the Great Sunday of Pascha)
(10-05-2026)
WRITTEN DIVINE PROCLAMATION
Christians by habit?;
Christ's stirring dialogue with the Samaritan woman is revealing as it contains the fundamental truths of our Faith. A woman of diminished moral attainments dared to ask the Lord both about the place of true worship of God and the expectation of the coming of the Messiah.
The Lord - as He abhors no one but sin - admitted the conversation of a woman whom He knew very well of her moral aberrations. But He not only tolerated her, but also challenged her to a dialogue with His request for water.
The Samaritan woman, impressed by the transcendental clairvoyance of the Master, began to ask Him about issues that were hidden in the depths of her psyche: For the best place of worship of God and for her conscious expectation in the face of the coming Saviour. (In the ill-conceived pagan Samaria, the prophecy of the coming of the Saviour had remained alive).
At the woman's first question Jesus overturned everything that had been held up to that point. That is, the Pharisaic formalism, which, apart from its emphasis on external forms, had become a Eurocentric habit. A habit which gave rise to the hypocrisy of the religious establishment in Judea. In contrast, in the pagan «Galilee of the Gentiles», as well as in the heretical Samaria, people were more disobedient, more doubtful and... more sinful!
To them the Lord revealed the greatest truths: «The Spirit is God, and those who worship Him in spirit and in truth shall worship Him.». And in the praising expectation of the Samaritan «Oida. (i.e. I know it well) that the Messiah is coming, the so-called Christ», with disarming simplicity he revealed: «I am your people» (that's me talking to you)!
Samaritan, as if awakened from a heavy sleep of habit, was disturbed. She no longer cared for anything else. Nor of her full pitcher. She left it at the well and ran into town. She wanted to make sure that everyone, herself first, would be assured of the new age of grace that was dawning...
The Samaritans believed in Jesus. They were perhaps the first of the «proper» Jews to believe. (The Samaritan woman herself claimed to testify later - her sisters and her children).
The words of the Master beside Jacob's well were now permanently recorded in the memory of the beloved Disciple. Several years later he would write them vividly and faithfully in his Gospel.
Let us, our Christians, love the Lord of life, not by custom, not because we have found it so, not by habit. But by feeling, as Thomas did, His saving Passion and Resurrection.
Asking Him, like the Samaritan woman, about what we do not know. And He will answer us, cooling us with the «Water the living».
Rev. P. Mariatos
