In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen!
One may notice that the Church services of the Paschal season often refer to water and to sources of water. Thus, on the Friday of Bright Week, we celebrate the feast of the Life-giving Spring of the Mother of God. Then, last Sunday, we commemorated the healing of the paralytic at the Sheep Pool, whose waters possessed miraculous healing power. On Mid-Pentecost, according to the Typicon, the blessing of water is celebrated after the Divine Liturgy. Today’s Gospel reading contains the conversation between our Lord Jesus Christ and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Finally, on the Sunday of the Blind Man, the Lord sends the blind man to the Pool of Siloam to wash and recover his sight.
Is this a coincidence? It is not.
In the Gospel reading for the feast of Pentecost, the Lord Jesus Christ says: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me … out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37–38). The Evangelist John adds that the Lord said this concerning the Holy Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were to receive.
The Lord says something similar to the Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
Thus, water here symbolizes the grace of the Holy Spirit.
This water of grace was foretold by the ancient prophets. The holy Prophet Isaiah says: “Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3).
And the Prophet Zechariah, foreseeing that the Holy Spirit would be poured out abundantly upon the Apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and through them upon all mankind, exclaims:
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea… And the Lord shall be King over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:8–9).
Thus, the action of the Holy Spirit is likened to water, because God’s grace purifies defiled souls, invigorates and renews them, just as rain revives the dry vegetation of the earth.
The grace of the Holy Spirit is not something distant from us or unknown to us. It dwells in our hearts from the very day of our baptism. In every Christian soul a great mystery is being accomplished: the mystery of the formation of a Christian, preparing him or her for eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
This mystery, imperceptible and incomprehensible to our minds, is accomplished throughout our whole life by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which works together with the free will of man.
God’s grace does not force the will of man, but inclines and strengthens it toward good works. It establishes faith in the heart, begins the spiritual life, and perfects it. It heals the infirmities of the soul and supports man in all the difficulties he encounters on the path of salvation.
Without the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are not able to advance on the path of salvation, nor even to find it, for the salvation of the soul is itself an incomprehensible mystery.
God’s grace reveals itself in proportion to our progress in Christian life. Thus the saints became sources of grace even for others, as the Lord says: “He who believes in Me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
May this blessed period of Pascha lead us to spiritual renewal, as we sing in the Troparion of Mid-Pentecost:
“In the middle of the feast, O Saviour, fill my thirsty soul with the waters of piety, as Thou didst cry to all: If anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink. O Christ God, Fountain of our life, glory to Thee!”
Amen.
Christ is Risen!
