Sunday of the Samaritan Woman – Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
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Receiving and finding of living water, manifested as a prayer of the mind in the heart and enlightenment of the mind, is a gift of God – “the water that I shall give him” (John 4:14). Then we do not need a spiritual guide, grace alone will lead us – “the water that shall flow into eternal life” (John 4:14).
The manifestation and flow of the grace in our hearts is a testimony that we have personally accepted the gift of God and that we have matured as individuals; a testimony that we are no longer hired workers, but children of our Heavenly Father; a testimony that we are acting in the power of a person – who bears witness of His Son.
True worshippers will worship the Father in the grace of the Holy Spirit and in the confession of the true Faith. Worship in spirit and in truth is one and the same worship, one and the same action, one and the same grace. And it occurs in one and the same place, first and foremost – in our heart. Following the enlightenment of the mind, and in obedience, as well as externally.
The grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord, from the hour of our Baptism is to be found within our hearts. It is not enough just to be baptised in the Church, but that we worship God in spirit and in truth, but it is also necessary to activate and actualise the grace of Holy Baptism, through deeds of faith. It is such worshippers that God requires us to be.
Whoever wants to know what this means, that is, whoever wants to discover the source of living water, which flows into eternal life, let him enter into absolute that is to say wholehearted obedience to the commandments of Christ, that is, to the Church, to the Holy Tradition, to his spiritual father – above all, to his Bishop. That for us, and nothing else, is the meaning of the words: “I have food to eat of which you do not know … My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work” (John 4, 32- 34).
The holy fathers often use the term spirit to refer to the mind. In the biblical-anthropological sense, worship in spirit and in truth means worship with a healed mind.
A man with a healed mind is a man who has united the energy of his mind with the essence of his mind, which is found in his heart. Because this union is an action of the grace of the Holy Spirit and takes place prayerfully-ascetically inside the heart, a healed mind in the proper sense is the same as an enlightened mind with the gift of the prayer of the mind in the heart.
In as much as this prayerful union is constantly graceful, and not temporarily ascetic, then a healed mind is the same as a deified mind. The deified mind is a mind of the Spirit introduced into all truth; contemplator of the uncreated light. Only for the one who has a healed, deified mind can we say that he/she is chaste and virgin, in the true Orthodox sense.
A great consolation and great hope is the fact that the God-Man Jesus Christ gives everyone the opportunity for repentance and the opportunity for a personal meeting and communion with Him. Even to great sinners like the Samaritan woman – according to that we have read.
But let us begin with ourselves. If you agree with me, then let us first weep or force ourselves to weep, for it is the initial gift of the living water that leads into eternal life, a gift appropriate to our level of spiritual development, which bears witness of the synchronisation of our way of life with the level of the spiritual development we are at, with which we liberate our heart from the captivity of the passions.
“Lord, You gave me dry land, give me also water springs”; i.e. crying and tears of repentance.
P.S. I wanted to write in simpler terms about – what living water is, but there is nothing else other than; that it is the grace of the Holy Spirit given to us in the hour of our Holy Baptism.
Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
(29.05.2021 15:49)
