Father Christopher Zugger

The Sundays of Pascha are all connected with the theme of baptism, and belief in Christ as Son of God. These Sundays were set up for the instruction of the newly baptized adult converts who were received into the Church at Easter.   

The fifth paschal Sunday is given over to the texts of the Samaritan Woman, she who boldly bantered with a certain Jewish rabbi on a hot afternoon by the well of Shechem. Afterward, she led her townspeople to faith in Him as the Messiah. Known in Greek as Photina and Slavonic as Svetlana, or “Light”, the Samaritan Woman moves from being a woman living in shame (and thus her appearance all alone at the well during the hottest part of the day), to a vibrant missionary. Recounted in John 4, this lively exchange between the woman and the Son of God is one of the most important conversations in the New Testament.

The theme of water from last Sunday – the cure at the pool of Bethesda – and Mid-Pentecost Wednesday – the cry of Jesus to all to come to Him to drink of immortal water – is continued today with the water at Jacob’s Well. Here, the famous encounter takes place between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. The Woman who sought more than water, as we know by her ready questions and challenges to the Jewish teacher, and she finds fulfillment far beyond her imagination.

Photina lives in shame, yet when Jesus engages her in the talk which will save her soul, she emerges as a bright soul who is searching, though she does not realize it, for Truth. And in Jesus she will find all that she needs! In fact, she leaves the water pot at the well, because the message she proclaims to the other Samaritans is so important. When Jesus exposed her sins, she replies that he must be a prophet, and we can tell that there is hope in her heart. Because of this hope, and Jesus’ loving but firm manner, she realizes that He is more than any prophet. In icons the well is generally depicted like a baptismal font, or in the shape of a Greek cross, as a sign of the salvation that came to that place. The actual Jacob’s Well today has an ancient baptismal font placed directly in front of it.