-I stand here. Go to the city. Buy the necessary food. We'll eat at this place. -Are we all going?
-Yes, Juan. It's good that you're in a group.
-And you? Are you staying alone? -Yes... They are Samaritans...
-They won't be the worst of Christ's enemies. -Go on, get going! I'll pray while I wait for you. For you and for these.
The disciples leave reluctantly. Three or four times they turn to look at Jesus, who has seated himself on a sunny wall beside the low, wide curbstone of a well (a large well, so wide that it looks almost like a cistern). In summer it must be shaded by large trees that are now leafless. The water is not visible, but on the ground beside the well there are clear signs that it has been drawn: small puddles and circles of wet jugs.
Jesus sits and meditates in his usual position: elbows resting on his knees; hands forward, joined together; body slightly curved; head bent downward. Then, feeling the warmth of a pleasant little sun, she drops the cloak from her head and shoulders and has it gathered on her lap.
She raises her head to smile at a crowd of quarrelling birds that are fighting over a whisker that someone has dropped by the well.
Suddenly, a woman arrives. The birds flee. She comes to the well with an empty amphora held by one of the handles with her left hand; her right hand pulls aside the veil with a gesture of surprise, to see who is the man sitting there.
Jesus smiles at this woman of about thirty-five or forty years of age, tall, with strongly marked but beautiful features. A type of woman that we would say almost Spanish: olive pallor; very luminous lips and rather shy; large eyes, almost too big, and black, under very thick eyebrows; braids, which are transparent through the light veil, of black corvine color. Also the forms, rather modeled and striking, reflect a marked oriental type, slightly flexuous, like that of Arab women. She wears a multicolored striped dress, tight at the waist, tight at the hips and chest, then hanging, in a kind of wavy fringe, to the floor. Many rings on the fleshy and brown hands, many bracelets on the wrists that stand out under the linen sleeves. On her neck she wears a heavy necklace, from which hang medals (I would say amulets, for they are of the most varied shapes). Heavy earrings, shining under the veil, fall to the height of the neck.
-Peace be with you, woman. Will you give me a drink? I have walked a long way and I am thirsty.
-But aren't you a Jew? Are you asking me, a Samaritan, to drink? What has happened? Have we been rehabilitated, or are you disintegrated? Surely something great has happened, when a Jew speaks kindly to a Samaritan woman. In any case, I should answer you: "I give you nothing, to punish in you all the insults that the Jews have inflicted on us for centuries.
-That's right: a big event. As a consequence, many things have changed, and even more are going to change. God has given a great gift to the world and because of it many things have changed. If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, "Give me a drink," perhaps you yourself would ask Him for a drink and He would give you living water.
-Living water is in the veins of the earth. This well has it... but it is ours - The woman is mocking and arrogant.
-The water is God's, just as goodness is God's, and life itself. Everything is from one God, woman. And all men come from God: Samaritans as well as Jews. Is not this Jacob's well? Is not Jacob the head of our race? If a mistake has divided us, it does not change the origin.
-Our mistake, isn't it? - asked the woman, aggressively.
-Neither ours nor yours. The mistake of someone who had lost sight of charity and justice. I am not offending you, nor your race. Why do you want to be offensive?
-You're the first Jew I've ever heard speak like that. The others... But as for the well, yes, it is Jacob's well, and it has so much water and so clear that we Sycharites prefer it to the other springs. But it is very deep, and you have neither amphora nor wineskin; how could you draw for me living water? Are you, perhaps, more than Jacob, our holy patriarch, who found this abundant water for himself, for his children and his herds of cattle, and who left it to us as a gift and a memorial of himself?
-You have said it. Look, whoever drinks of this water will continue to be thirsty; I, on the other hand, have a water that if one drinks it, one will never feel thirsty again. But it is mine alone, and I give it to those who ask for it. Truly I tell you, whoever receives this water that I give him will be satiated forever and will never thirst again, because my water will become in him a sure, eternal spring.
-How? I do not understand. Are you a magician? How can a man transform himself into a well? The camel drinks and gets water in his bulky belly, but then he consumes it and it doesn't last him all his life. And you say that your water lasts all his life?
-More than that: it will spring up to eternal life. It will flow to eternal life in whoever drinks it, and will produce seeds of eternal life, because it is a fountain of health.
-Give me of that water if it is true that you possess it. I tire myself coming here. I shall have it and never thirst again, and I shall never get sick or grow old.
-Is that all you get tired of, nothing else? Do you only feel the need to draw water to drink, for your poor body? Reflect. There is something that is worth more than the body: the soul. Jacob did not give to his own and to himself only the water of the earth, but he took care to give himself, and to give, the holiness, the water of God.
-You call us heathen. If that is true, we cannot be holy?
The woman has lost her petulant and ironic tone and is now submissive and slightly confused.
-A pagan can also be virtuous. God, who is just, will reward him for the good he has done. It will not be a complete reward, but I tell you that between a faithful in serious guilt and a pagan without guilt God looks less rigorously to the pagan. And why, if you know that you are, do not you go to the true God? What is your name?
-Photinai.
-Well, answer me, Fotinai: Does it grieve you that you cannot aspire to holiness because you are a pagan - as you say -, because you live - as I say - in the obfuscation of an ancient error?
-It grieves me.
-And then, why don't you live, at least, as a virtuous pagan?
-Lord!
-Yes. Can you deny it? Go call your husband and come back here with him.
-I have no husband...
The woman's confusion grows.
-You said it yourself: you don't have a husband. You have had five men and now you have another one with you who is not your husband either.
Was this necessary? Your religion also discourages impudence. Why do you live like this, Fotinai? Don't you feel tired of this effort to be the flesh of so many, instead of the honest wife of only one? Aren't you afraid of when your life will decline, when you will find yourself alone with your memories, with the bitterness of the past, with your fears? Yes, also with your fear, your fear of God and of the spectres. Where are your children?"
The woman lowers her head and falls silent.
-You do not have them here on earth. Yet their souls, whom you have prevented from knowing the day of light, accuse you; always. Jewels... beautiful dresses... a rich house... a well-stocked table... Yes, but emptiness and tears and inner misery. In reality you are an underdog, Fotinai; only with sincere repentance, through God's forgiveness - and as a consequence, that of your children - can you become rich again.
-Lord, I see that you are a prophet. I am ashamed...
-Before the Father who is in Heaven, were you not ashamed when you did evil? But... do not weep for humiliation before the Man.... Come here, Fotinai, come to me. I will tell you about God. Perhaps you did not know Him well and that is why... yes, that is why you have made so many mistakes; if you had known the true God well, you would not have lowered yourself in this way, He would have spoken to you and sustained you....
-Lord, our fathers worshipped on this mountain. You say that only in Jerusalem can one worship. But, as you say, God is only one. Help me to see where and how I should do it.....
-Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on the mountain of Samaria nor in Jerusalem will the Father be worshiped. You worship whom you do not know, we whom we know, for salvation comes from the Jews. Remember the Prophets. But the hour is coming - this is it - when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; no longer with the old rite but with the new one, exempt from sacrifices and hosts of animals consumed by fire: the rite of the eternal sacrifice of the immaculate Host consumed by the Fire of Charity: spiritual worship of the spiritual Kingdom, which will be understood by those who know how to worship in spirit and in truth. God is Spirit and must be adored spiritually.
-You say holy words. I know - we also know something - that the Messiah is coming soon; the Messiah, also called "the Christ". When he comes he will teach us everything. Near at hand is the one they say is his Forerunner; many go to him to hear him. But he is very severe. You are good. The needy souls are not afraid of you. I believe that Christ will be good. He is called the King of peace... Will he be long in coming?
-I have told you that this is his time.
-How do you know? Are you a disciple of his? The Forerunner has many disciples; so will the Christ.
-It is I who am speaking to you, the Christ Jesus.
-You! Oh!
The woman, who had been sitting next to Jesus, stands up and makes a gesture of fleeing.
-Why do you want to run away, woman?
-Because I am terrified to be next to you. You are holy...
-I am the Savior. I came here - and it was not necessary - because I knew that your soul was tired of wandering. You are already
nauseated by your food... I have come to give you a new one, which will take away your nausea and your fullness.... There my disciples return, with my bread, but the mere fact of having given you these initial crumbs of your redemption has already nourished me.
The disciples look at the woman sideways, more or less prudently, but none of them speaks. She leaves, forgetting the water and the amphora.
-Look, Master," says Peter, "they have treated us well. Here is cheese, fresh bread, olives and apples. Take what you want. That woman did well to leave the amphora; it will be quicker that way than with our little wineskins. We drink and then fill them, and then we won't have to ask the Samaritans for anything, we won't even have to go near their fountains. Won't you eat? I looked for fish for you, but there was none. Perhaps you would have liked it better. You look tired and pale.
-I have a food that you do not know. I will eat of it. It will amply replenish my energy.
The disciples look at each other with a gesture of wanting to ask questions.
Jesus answers their silent questions.
-My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to accomplish the work he has given me to do.
When a sower scatters the seed, can he think that he has done everything, as if he had already reaped the harvest? Certainly not. How much he will still have to do before he can say: "My work is accomplished"! Until that time he will not be able to rest. Look at these fields under the joyful sun of the sixth hour. Only a month ago, even less, the earth was bare, dark with water from the rains. Look at it now: abundant stalks of wheat, just sprouted, of a very faint green, which, under this intense light, seems even lighter, making it whitish with the subtle veil with which they cover it, which is the future harvest. You, seeing it, say: "In four months it will be harvest. The sowers will take the reapers with them; for though one is sufficient to sow his own field, yet many are needed to reap it.
Both parties are happy: both he who has sown a small sack of wheat and now must prepare the barns to store it, and those who in a few days earn enough to live on for a few months". In the same way, in the field of the spirit, those who reap what was sown by me will rejoice with me, and like me, for I will give them my wages and the fruit due to them. I will give them something to live on in my eternal Kingdom. You have only to reap. I have done the hardest part of the work; nevertheless, I say to you: "Come, reap in my field; I am glad that you are laden with my wheat. Once you have gathered all my wheat, sown by me everywhere, untiring, the will of God will be fulfilled, and I will sit down to the banquet in the heavenly Jerusalem". Here come the Samaritans with Photinai. Show charity to them. They are souls who draw near to God.