We are now in the midst of the Apostles Fast. Several years ago, when my sister was first learning about the Byzantine tradition – we didn’t grow up in this tradition, you see – she asked me what this fast is all about and, because I didn’t really know, I said, “Well, we’re Byzantine and Byzantines love to fast. You might as well ask why we’re not fasting at any given time as why we are fasting.”

And that really is true. Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov, in his excellent article titled “Fasting for Non-Monastics,” which I recommend you all read, estimates that there are approximately 250 fasting days each year in our calendar. That’s more than half the year! Now, this varies depending on how you interpret the Typikon (I count closer to 190 days) and it varies quite a bit from year to year – mainly because of this fast – the Apostles Fast – which is a different length each year. It can be anywhere from two to six weeks in length. But my answer to my sister – that we fast because we love to fast and because it is good to fast – is really insufficient, I think, even if it is true. I mean, I want there to be something that makes this fast distinctly meaningful. And I believe there can be.

Historically, I am told, this fast developed to give those who were unable to fast during the Great Fast for various reasons – such as pregnancy or illness – an opportunity to fast. It’s sort of like summer school – a chance to catch up with those who may have gotten ahead of us last semester. But I also find this to be an insufficient reason for us all to continue observing this fast year after year – even those of us who did keep the Great Fast.

We call this the Apostles Fast simply because we fast until the great feast of the Holy and Preeminent Apostles Peter and Paul on June 29th. However, perhaps it is also meaningful that the first Sunday of this Apostles Fast, which is always the Second Sunday after Pentecost, we always read about the calling of the first apostles: Simon, who would become Peter, and Andrew, his brother, and then James and John, the sons of Zebedee. This fast, it would seem, from its movable beginning until its fixed end, is apostolic in its liturgical focus. And, indeed, we have much to learn from the apostles about ascetic practices like fasting and their role in our vocations.

Today, Andrew and Peter and James and John show us how to respond to vocation: immediately they leave behind everything they have – those fishing nets and boats were their livelihood – and they follow Jesus (Matt 4:20, 22). This is a pure ascetic act – an act of self-denial.

One thing that fasting can help teach us is detachment from the things of this world. Let us not be enslaved to a small sack of flesh[i] in our bellies. Then perhaps we will not even be enslaved to our employers, for example, or to any power in this world, even if it is our livelihood, but we will be free and ready to respond to the call of Jesus Christ in our lives when we hear it. If we train in this way (which is what the word askesis originally meant – training or exercise) during this Apostles Fast, we will be more ready, like the first apostles, to respond immediately, to immediately walk away from whatever worldly attachments we have accrued, and to follow our Lord wherever he goes, even to the cross, through which is everlasting life.

Peter immediately leaves everything to follow Jesus, but he did not always follow through. Just before Jesus was to be delivered up to death, Peter said that he would follow Jesus, even to death. “I will lay down my life for you,” he says to Jesus (John 13:37). These are good words, but when death is truly imminent, when Jesus is arrested and suffers imprisonment, lies, interrogation, spit, and beatings, Peter reveals his weakness – a weakness many of us share. His earlier words were only so much bravado and three times he denied even knowing Christ, let alone being his disciple and apostle.

This is not Peter’s finest hour. But it is an hour that many of us can relate to. Sad to say, I’ve heard lies come out of my own mouth before – merely to avoid an awkward situation regarding trivialities, let alone to avoid torture and death. Lord, have mercy on me the sinner. Perhaps the lies of my mouth have not been so weighty as Peter’s lie about not knowing Jesus, but what we practice in small things become the habits that inform our large decisions and responses. So, again, it is important to fast so that we are well-trained not to give in to our every impulse, but to watch carefully and discern in our hearts whether they are from the Lord or our passions or the demons.

After Peter’s denial will come his repentance and in this he is once again a good model for us during the Apostles Fast, which is a season of repentance. After his denial of Christ, Peter hears the rooster crow and he remembers that the Lord predicted his denial before the crowing and then he weeps bitterly (Matt 26; Luke 22). In the Greek prayer of absolution after the confession of sins, the priest recalls, “The Lord forgave Peter his denial when he wept bitterly.” Repentance and confession of our sins during this Apostles Fast and each of the four fasts is an essential part of our tradition and it is an essential part of our vocations, inasmuch as each of us are sinners and at times fail to follow the Lord wherever he goes.

We do all have a vocation, each and every one of us is called by the Lord, just as Peter and Andrew and James and John are called by the Lord today. We are not all called to be apostles, of course, but we are all called by Christ to a life in Christ. It will take its own shape as he intends for us and as is best for us. Whatever shape our vocation takes, the fasting, prayer, and repentance that we emphasize during this Apostles Fast are necessary tools for walking the narrow way he calls us to.

The word “vocations” is often bandied about, misused, and over-specialized. When people talk about vocations – we need to pray for vocations, they say, or, the Church is suffering from a vocations crisis, you will sometimes hear – they are often actually talking only about vocations to the priesthood.

Sadly, the vocations crisis extends well behind the priesthood. There should be more deacons than there are priests, if you ask me, and the opposite is the case. There’s a long-lasting crisis in the vocation to the diaconate. I’ve only been a priest for a few years, but it is still disturbing that in this time I have celebrated only one baptism and only one crowning in marriage. There is a crisis in the vocation to marriage and even to the life in Christ.

It’s an error to say that there is a shortage of vocations. That would imply that God is not calling – that God is not doing his job, not holding up his end of the deal and, frankly, I find that a blasphemous suggestion. God is calling to the priesthood, to the diaconate, to the monastic life, to marriage, but we are not responding. We are not answering God’s call. We are not immediately leaving behind our nets – our earthly toils and vain anxieties – and following him wherever he goes.

One reason so many of us are ignoring the call of the Lord is that we have failed to train to be at the ready to respond to his call by a life a prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance. We’re not taking this seriously, when in fact there is nothing more important. Our priorities are out of whack. We seek immediate comfort rather than everlasting life. Let us take this Apostles Fast as an opportunity to reverse these tendencies in our lives.

Our Lord is saying to us all, “Come, follow me.” Let us train and ready ourselves like soldiers at attention to respond to that call.

 

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[i] “If you cannot be in control of your stomach, if this simple sack of flesh is the ruler your life, how can you hope to be in control of more complex physiology, or your mind, or your soul?!” (Sveshnikov)

When I was an art student in college, I was particularly fascinated by medieval art and iconography. And I spent a lot of time poring over books of medieval art. The art of this time, in my opinion, expresses the spiritual reality more effectively than what would come later beginning in the Renaissance, which, with its classicism and humanism began to exalt the merely human over the divine. That’s a controversial opinion in the western world, which tends to look more favorably upon the works of Michelangelo and Da Vinci then it does upon the unknown artisans of the centuries before them.

Right there is highlighted a cultural difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For the most part, the artisans of the Middle Ages are, as I say, unknown. It is in the Renaissance that the personality of the artist becomes exalted above the subject they are portraying in their art. When art historians are commenting on David or the Mona Lisa, they often have a lot more to say about Michelangelo and DA Vinci than they do about David or the Mona Lisa. The anonymity of most artists before this makes that kind of analysis impossible.

To this very day, iconography is traditionally left unsigned. Though, that tradition is unfortunately beginning to wane. The humility before the subject we portray is an act of veneration. How can I paint an icon of the Theotokos – and then sign my name to it? As if to call attention to myself rather than to my subject who is, in this case, “more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim”?

And so, perhaps understanding this, (though I am well aware of other economic and cultural forces at play, including the higher value given to the patron then to the artisan at the time), the artists and iconographers usually remained anonymous in the Middle Ages.

The anonymous iconographer is not concerned with exalting himself, but with exalting Christ; with acknowledging Christ before all; with loving Christ even more than himself (cf. Matt 10:32, 37). I think, if we are to become saints, which is what our Lord calls us to and makes us for, we can learn something from this idea of the anonymous iconographer. That is, we can focus our efforts not on calling attention to our own good work, but, by our good work, we can call attention to Christ – with both words and deeds. And we can focus on him rather than on ourselves. In fact, we will find our true selves in Christ. If we acknowledge him before all others, he will acknowledge us before his Father, he assures us today (Matt 10:32).

Preferring to acknowledge Christ rather than themselves, the medieval iconographers were intentionally anonymous, but another kind of anonymity also soon captivated me as I pored over those medieval art books. Medieval art is, as you know, very old. As a result, a lot of it is in significantly damaged condition. And a lot of it is decontextualized from having been moved around through various collections and its provenance is lost. For these reasons, and simply due to centuries of forgetting, sometime not only the artist, but also the subject is unknown. And so, quite often, one finds in books of medieval art a beautiful picture filled with images of saints. They’re clearly saints, being haloed figures in a medieval Christian artwork, but it is no longer clear who they are, specifically, if it ever was. Very often, in the description of the image, it will read something like, “Christ with the Virgin and John the Baptist and four unknown Saints.” Or, even just, “unknown saint.”

I love these figures. Often on the periphery of a scene filled with greater and better-known figures, they are saints too, but they are unknown saints. Personally, these unknown saints have become for me representative of all the saints we do not know by name. The saints who lived and worked and died for Christ in obscurity, which, I believe, is most saints. And today, we venerate them all.

I love to commemorate all the saints in a general way, as we do on this final Sunday of the Pentecostarion, the Sunday of All Saints, because it gives us the opportunity to remember in some way even the unremembered holy ones. Every day of the year, the Church lifts up a long list of saints we do know by name. These holy men and women are presented to us as inspiring examples of life in Christ worthy of our imitation. Yet, at the same time, it seems to me that most Catholic and Orthodox Christians I know hold in their hearts a saint they knew personally – often a member of their own family – who is perhaps not likely to be raised to the altars of the Church for public veneration. Most saints, it seems to me, are unsung, except on this day, on which we “celebrate a solemn feast of all those who from the ages have found grace before God.”

The unknown saints should encourage us in our own vocation, which is our own path to holiness and union with God. Because, like them, most of us are not prominent or famous or likely to be. Most of us will not be glorified in the churches with our own feast days or any such thing. Does this mean that we are not saints? Or that we are not called to sanctity? God forbid that we should fail to understand that we are created for holiness and union with God. And that this is attainable to us by his grace. I dare say that fame and prominence actually diminish our prospects of sanctity. Our relative obscurity is an opportunity to grow in humility. Of course, obscurity alone will not make us holy, but it is a helpful gift and not an impediment.

We are known to God. And there are no saints unknown to God. He knows them all. And to be known by God is all that matters. It is of no significance whether or not we are remembered by the world. To be remembered by God is to be remembered eternally and to live forever in him. Thus we pray for all those who have died in Christ, that the Lord God remember them forever. And for them we sing, “eternal memory.” This is nothing less than a prayer that God make them saints. Perhaps we don’t know what a saint is. A saint is holy person, made holy by grace, and eternally alive in Christ

How then can we access this grace and become holy and live forever? I can think of no greater grace than to be acknowledged by Jesus Christ before his Father. And he tells us today that, if we acknowledge him before others, he will acknowledge us before his Father. Evangelization, then, is mandatory for our salvation, then. It can take many forms, but it must take some form in our lives if we are to be acknowledged before the father.

But what if we have denied him? All of us who are sinners have denied him in some sense. He says that if we have denied him before others, he will deny us before his Father. Those are sharp words we need to hear. But if you have denied Christ, do not despair. “He forgave Peter his denial when he wept bitterly.” The Lord is kind and merciful and eager to forgive those who repent.

Beginning this evening, this repentance of Peter is our model of repentance. Tonight, we begin the Apostles Fast in preparation for the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul on June 29^th. It has come to my attention that some of us do not even know about this fast. This is one of four seasons of repentance in our Church and it is not to be neglected by us. Our Church imposes no mandatory means of observing this fast, but neither does it permit us to ignore it. It is given to us as a season of repentance, which we all sorely need in our lives. Repentance is a way of life and not a momentary act.

Let us take this opportunity to increase in our lives the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To do no fasting at all during this season is unacceptable. Neither is it acceptable to fast perfectly while continuing in our sins. St. Ambrose of Optina instructs us, “People have to answer greatly for not keeping… the fasts…. They repent and consider themselves sinners in every other respect, but they do not think to repent about not keeping the fasts.”

Meanwhile, St. Basil the Great observes,

Beware of limiting the good of fasting to mere abstinence from meats. Real fasting is alienation from evil. ‘Loose the bands of wickedness.’ Forgive your neighbor the mischief he has done you. Forgive him his trespasses against you…. You do not devour flesh, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you indulge in outrages. You wait for evening before you take food, but you spend the day in the law courts. Woe to those who are ‘drunken, but not with wine.’ Anger is the intoxication of the soul, and makes it out of its wits like wine.

Take heart. We all have much work to do, and this is an opportunity for us to do it together as a Church helping one another to grow in holiness and become saints, known to God alone perhaps, but saints nonetheless.

Here at St. Stephen’s, just as they did in the ancient temple in Jerusalem, we have seven oil lamps burning in a beautiful candelabra in the holy place, behind the holy table. We also burn oil lamps in front of some of our icons. We used to use electric lights and liquid paraffin candles, but the olive oil lamps are more traditional for us. In fact, they go all the way back to scripture – Jesus even uses them in a parable.

While I was at the seminary, they tried to introduce olive oil lamps, but they kept smoldering and going out. They couldn’t figure out the problem, so the olive oil lamps were soon abandoned in favor of more user-friendly, disposable cartridges. When I first started working with oil lamps myself, I kept having the same problem with them. But, eventually, through a process of trial and error, I figured out what was necessary to keep them burning.

At first, I mistakenly assumed that all that was necessary was that they have oil in them, that the wick be submerged in the oil, and that the wick be extended far enough to burn brightly. Eventually, I learned, however, that this is not enough. In fact, it is necessary not only that there be oil in the lamps, but that the oil be sufficiently deep, because, the oil does not want to travel very far up the wick before it reaches the flame. If it has to travel too far it goes out much more quickly. Secondly, it is much more important that the wick has been recently trimmed than that it is extended very far. If you have the wick extended like a half an inch, but you haven’t trimmed it and the oil is not very deep it will still smolder rather than properly burning. Also, if it’s extended that far but the oil is deep enough, the flame will flicker and produce black smoke causing a lot of soot to a build up. It’s better for the wick to be extended just a little – like a quarter inch is enough or even less – be recently trimmed, and have sufficiently deep oil. If the lamp is prepared this way, it will burn long and brightly.

But what does all of this have to do with this great feast of Pentecost? The fiftieth and final day of Pascha, the feast of weeks, the seven times seven plus one day, the last and greatest day of the feast (John 7:37), the day of the first fruits, the day Torah is given to Moses on Sinai, the day the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the apostles? On this day, why am I wasting our time with a tutorial about oil lamps?

Well, remember that when the Lord descended upon the holy mountain to give the Law to Moses, he descended upon it in fire. And when the Holy Spirit filled the holy apostles, “there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributed and resting on each one of them” (Acts 2:3). And remember when our Lord Jesus said, “I have come to cast fire on the earth and would that it were already burning” (Luke 12). And do not forget that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:24). The image of fire is worthy of our meditation, especially on this day of Pentecost.

It is not without reason that we burn the oil lamps in front of the holy images of Jesus Christ, his mother, and his saints. His mother, the Theotokos, herself is like the burning bush in the desert, always burning but never consumed, through which Moses encounters to the Lord. Through her, God becomes man, so through her all people can encounter God. She and all the deified saints are themselves become all fire – a consuming fire, like God – one with God. The lamps burning before them remind us of the tongues of fire that rest upon all those filled with the Holy Spirit – and of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire they have all received, has prophesied by John the Baptist.

So I think these lamps are a good symbol and a good image of the Spirit-filled life we are to live. And I even think that the mundane task of tending these lamps can teach us something about the spiritual life.

I am reminded of one of the sayings of Amma Syncletica. She says,

“In the beginning, there are a great many battles and a good deal of suffering for those who are advancing towards God and afterwards, ineffable joy. It is like those who wish to light a fire; at first they are choked by the smoke and cry, and by this means obtain what they seek, as it is said: ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb.12:24): so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work.”[i]

When we begin to move toward God – to live the life of the Spirit – we are at first very often frustrated. At the beginning, there is struggle and suffering. When I first tried to tend the oil lamps, I couldn’t keep them lit. Amma Syncletica says that when we first try to light a fire we end up choked by the smoke. The smoke gets in our eyes causing them to tear up – causing us to cry. This is how the life of the spirit must begin – with tears.

Well, it’s interesting the way that this works with these oil lamps. You get that black smoke pouring out of the lamp when your wick is too high. Now, the wick is the external part of the lamp. It’s the part that burns – that gives light. Without it, you’ve got nothing. But with too much of it, you’ve got black smoke. The smoke which brings tears. The black smoke is our folly and our sin, over which we should weep. One way to raise a stink and lots of smoke is with too much focus on the externals – with too much wick and not enough oil.

The oil is the internal part of the lamp. And it’s like our spiritual center. Remember we are chrismated with oil – with chrism that is the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. And it’s more important for the oil to be deep than for the wick to be long. If all we do is make a show of our faith and our religion and we have in our hearts no real loving relationship with God and our neighbor, it is like we have long wicks and shallow oil. We may burn brightly, but – if so – briefly and soon we smolder and go out.

If we really are filled with zeal for the house of the Lord but we often misdirect that zeal and turn people away from God’s house and scare them off with our judgmentalism or our excessive pharisaical concern for external details, then perhaps we are like a lamp with deep oil and too much wick. We burn long and brightly but at the same time make more smoke and heat than light.

Now if we’re like those who get scared off or for whatever reason reject the Church and true religion and avoid the liturgical services and the holy mysteries. Or, if we claim to be spiritual but not religious, then it is like we have no wick at all. Our oil may be deep or it may be shallow, but it cannot burn.

The way to stop the flicker and the smoke is not to get rid of the wick, but to trim the wick. Weep and confess our sins. Cast off our own excesses. And after this do the hard work of tending the lamp – of constantly checking and refilling the oil – of constantly trimming the wick and extending it neither too much nor too little.

“Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can say, I do my little office, I read my psalms, I fast a little bit, I pray and I meditate, I live in peace with others as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. Tell me, Father, what else, what more can I do?” Then the old man, Abba Joseph, stood up, stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

Our vocation is nothing less than this: By the power of the Holy Spirit to become all flame – like a consuming fire – like God

 

 

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[i] (as quoted by Laura Swan in The Forgotten Desert Mothers (Paulist Press, 2001).

Why do we suffer? Why is there a pandemic? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is it that babies sometimes die before they get a chance to live? Why is it that sometimes they are born blind, like the man in today’s Gospel?

Theologians know that God does not make death – that no evil comes from God – that God is the author of every good and only good. In other words, theologians know that God is not to blame for our suffering or for death or for blindness.

Whence come these things into the world, then? Well, the wages of sin is death, as St. Paul reveals (Rom 6:23). So, it would seem that sin, which is missing the mark, is somehow the origin of every injustice. Every instance of a good person suffering evil may be rightly blamed on sin – either on their own sin or on someone else’s sin.

It’s clear that it’s not always our own sin that causes us to suffer, though it often is. But if someone persecutes or abuses you, you suffer even though you have done nothing wrong. Everything that Jesus suffers is like this. Jesus is altogether sinless. Yet, he suffers greatly from the sins of others who persecute him and mock him and torture him and crucify him. When we suffer at the hands of others, we do well to remember that Jesus has identified with us in that – and has taught us also how to respond to it – with forgiveness.

Nonetheless, people usually do not respond that way to the injustices they suffer. Most people, when they get hurt, lash out and hurt others – often the ones they hurt aren’t even the same people that did them harm. Sometimes, for example, a boss will humiliate someone at work and, too fearful and cowardly to respond like a Christian to the one who has wronged him – with courage and honesty – and without animosity or resentment, instead they swallow the humiliation and shame and anger and resentment and bring that home to their spouse and their children – snapping at them and humiliating them, though they’re totally innocent and only want love and kindness.

Sometimes, we’re not even good at revenge. Revenge is a bad thing but taking it out on the innocent is even worse. Yet many times this is what we do.

In this way, our sin sends out ripples of hurt harm into the world. That’s clear. When one person gets hurt, it often leads to them hurting others. Hurt people hurt people. That’s not a justification, by the way. There is no justification for us to hurt each other – to be nasty to one another, or unforgiving, or judgmental. It’s not a justification, it’s just an observation. This can all be easily observed in our own lives.

Partly extrapolating from these experiences, some theologians have concluded that all suffering ultimately results from sin. There are the obvious ways in which this is the case, such as the examples I have described, but there are also hidden ways in which our sins hurt other people and ourselves.

We are spirits as well as bodies and so our sins have spiritual ramifications in the spiritual world as well as physical ramifications in the physical world. Sin is a break with our true created nature, which is both spiritual and material. We cannot even begin to imagine how much suffering each of our sins, voluntary and involuntary, brings into the world – into the whole cosmos. With our sin, which is unnatural, we disrupt the whole created order of nature.

So if we understand that sin is the cause of all human suffering, the disciples’ question to Jesus about the man blind since birth seems to be a reasonable one: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). You see, they understood that blindness results from sin. That’s true.  It’s true of both physical blindness and spiritual blindness. And they understood that we suffer from one another’s sins as well as from our own. In Exodus, the Lord says he will visit “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children” (Ex 20:5; 34:7). So they suggested that it might be the sins of his parents rather than his own sins that resulted in his blindness. Again, it’s not unreasonable, especially if we understand that this man’s parents include not only his mother and his father but even all his ancestors back to his first parents Adam and Eve. Surely the world is broken and sometimes people are born blind into this broken world because of sin.

We might also add the sins of demons to our consideration. Their sins too – and not only the sins of us humans – yield great suffering in the cosmos. They too are at war with God and with their own created nature.

In any case, despite all of this, Jesus once again confounds conventional theology. He says, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). Jesus later says the same thing about the illness of Lazarus, saying that “it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).

I am left gasping at this explanation which confounds all my reason. I could dance around it with cleverness and point out that Jesus does not altogether deny the role of sin in the origin of blindness. He only says that it wasn’t the sins of this man or his parents. One could argue that perhaps the sins of others or the sins of demons are to blame. But Jesus doesn’t blame any sin at all in his etiology of the blindness. My reason wants to chirp, “If sin is not to blame, then what? If no sinner is at fault, then who? God?” I cannot blame God for this man’s blindness. But Jesus says that he is blind so that the works of God might be made manifest in him.

I understand very well that Jesus heals him – and that this is a work of God that reveals the divinity of Jesus. I understand very well that the Lord uses the man’s blindness to teach the world to see. This is what the Lord does again and again. Out of the darkness, he brings light – as on the first day of creation. He says, “Let there be light.” And there is light. I see that, out of death, the Lord brings life. By death, he tramples death. And so, how fitting that through the blindness of one man, he gives eyes of faith to many. The man whose eyes are opened is brought before those who deny that Jesus is from God and he testifies to the healing, and that Jesus is of God, and he believes and worships Jesus (John 9:11, 13, 16, 25, 30-33, 38).

The Lord brings good out of evil. That’s what the Lord does. But he is the origin of no evil. So today, when he says that the man is blind so that God can heal him, I don’t understand. That’s a mystery to me. It’s rather like the mystery of the cross.

I want to ask Jesus after he gives his explanation, “Yeah, but, had it not been for sin in the world, surely this man would not have been born blind?” But that’s not the kind of question we’re going to hear from Jesus or his disciples. That’s the kind of speculative theology they don’t get into. Maybe that kind of thinking is more Greek than Hebrew – or maybe it’s more a curse of this age than that to be vexed by such questions. You won’t hear them saying things like, “Well, if reality were other than it is, what then would this or that be?” That’s not their shtick – not at all. Jesus is much more interested in healing this man than in theoretically analyzing his condition.

We ought to be like Jesus in this. Simply love, show compassion, heal, deliver, all to the glory of God, rather than trying to subject everything to our finite analytical human understanding, as if reality, or even God, were subject to us. If, instead, we seek to glorify God, then God blesses us beyond all understanding.

The mystery of good and evil is beyond our comprehension. And there comes a time to accept that we cannot understand everything – and that every answer we can give is a lie. The Truth is a Person, not an answer. Perhaps we can understand best in silent contemplation of the awesome mystery when we stop trying to figure everything out and abandon ourselves completely to God.

Jesus shines his light into the life of the Samaritan woman (John 4:5-42).

He comes to the well of their mutual father Jacob in the middle of the day – at the sixth hour, that is, at the height of noon – when the sun is at its highest in the sky and the day is at its hottest and brightest point. Given these conditions, it’s no wonder that Jesus was weary at this time and that he sat down beside the well to rest (John 4:6).

That’s no wonder, but here is a wonder: a woman comes to draw water from the well at the sixth hour. A sane woman would come to the well early in the morning, during the cool of the day, to draw the day’s water. These are desert conditions, don’t forget. Many have suggested that this Samaritan woman chooses this time to come to the well, in all this heat and brightness, because of a darkness in her life. That is, she comes at noon because no one else comes at noon. We can understand that a woman who had gone through five husbands and was now living with a man not her husband was perhaps outcast among the women of her community.  We don’t really know this, but it may be that a woman so popular with the men was rather unpopular with the women. And so she wants to avoid them. Small wonder. That’s understandable.

To escape the judgments, criticisms, and harassment of the other women, she comes to the well at the least popular time, when it’s at its hottest and brightest and most physically uncomfortable. Better to be physically uncomfortable than to endure the judgmental looks of others – you know that’s true. Better the staring eye of the noonday sun than the scornful eye of an enemy.

So to keep herself in the dark, she comes to the well in the light and finds sitting there by the well the one who is light himself, weary from his journey and asking her for water.

They speak of water and eternal life, of Samaritans and Jews, and of worship. Jesus reveals to her the true worship, which is worship in spirit and truth. And he tells her everything she’d ever done, as she puts it (John 4:39). He shines his light into her life.

Trying to hide, she finds herself exposed – but not exposed by her judgmental rivals – rather, exposed to the light by her merciful and loving Lord.

Sin festers in the dark and dies in the light. We are healed from sin, which is really a disease, by exposing in to the light. This is why confession is a sacrament of healing. When we sin, it’s as though we’ve been bitten by a poisonous creature and our choice is to leave the poison in the wound to do its work killing us or to draw the poison out into the light where it can do us no harm.

Truly, Jesus is the physician of our souls and bodies. And today, he heals the Samaritan woman by drawing the poison of her secret sin out into the light. She doesn’t quite confess it, though what she says is true when she says, ‘I have no husband” (4:17). Nonetheless, when Jesus exposes the true meaning of her words to her she recognizes and admits the truth of them by confessing that Jesus is a prophet (4:19), that is, that his words of the words of God and are the truth.

Hearing all that Jesus says and recognizing that he speaks the word of God, she leaves behind her water jar and hastens back to the very community she had been avoiding to tell them all that the long-expected Christ is sitting by their father’s well. How can she, an outcast, go among those who have despised her to preach to them the gospel? But that is what she does. Like the apostles who leave their nets when they are called by Jesus, she leaves behind her water jar to go and preach the gospel to the whole city.[i] She is called by our tradition equal-to-the-apostles.

She is no longer afraid of what other people think of her. Christ frees her from her fear of others’ judgment. I’m quite sure he doesn’t free her from others’ judgment. When this outcast woman of poor reputation comes into the city proclaiming that she has encountered the Christ, I’m sure she received more than one stink eye and suspicious glare. “Why should we trust a woman like you?” I expect many thought or even said. But she is freed from her fear of that judgment. She leaves that fear behind with her water jar at the well, because she has been freed from the darkness in her life by the light of the world, and no worldly power can stop the power of her God-given conviction. And so through her, many come to believe. She brings many into the light – to Christ – because Jesus is the light. She is like the first evangelist, bringing people to Christ even before he dies and rises from the dead.

By tradition, we know that she was baptized and brought her five sisters and her two sons into the faith and they all continued to evangelize. After the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, she and her family traveled to Carthage to preach the gospel there until they too were martyred.

And we also know the name she received in her baptism: Photini, the enlightened one, for she received the light of Christ and let it shine before all with neither fear nor shame again until the end of her life.

In some ways, Photini is the quintessential baptismal name. Some of the fathers of the Church regarded all the mysteries of initiation into the Church and into the body of Christ – baptism, chrismation, and eucharist – to be a single mystery, which they name illumination or enlightenment. The one thus received is therefore Photini and Photini becomes for us all an image of our baptism. Like Photini, we are all subject to death in our sins when Christ encounters us at the well, or at the font of our baptism, through which he shines his light into our darkness and illumines us. May we all, like Photini, having been filled with grace through the holy mysteries, live out our whole lives with evangelical fervor. Like her, let us proclaim to everyone we meet without fear of what they might think of us, the good news of Christ’s coming into the world and saving us from sin and death by his death and resurrection.

Christ is risen!

 

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[i] Chrysostom: As the apostles left their nets on being called, so she leaves her water jar to do the work of an evangelist by calling not one or two people, as Andrew and Philip did, but a whole city. (Homilies on the Gospel of John 34.1).