When the Samaritan woman came to the well with faith, she beheld You, O Water of Wisdom. You allowed her to drink in abundance and glorified her eternally, for she inherited the heavenly kingdom.

As I reflected on the two readings appointed for our worship this weekend, two things gripped my attention: (1) the description of what Barnabas said to the people of Antioch when he arrived, and (2) one of the responses the Samaritan women made to Jesus. Both have truly caused me to stop and think. I would like to share my thoughts.

First, Barnabas’ reaction to the Church at Antioch. ACTS states this: On his arrival Barnabas rejoiced to see the     evidence of God’s favor. He encouraged them all to remain firm in their commitment to the Lord. This reminded me that I should say these very same words to all I serve: remain firm in your commitment to the Lord. Do not doubt that the Lord is with us and that He has a plan which is for our good. We may not, perhaps, be able to see what the future will bring but, if we place our hope and trust in the Lord, what will come to pass will only be for our good and our spiritual growth.

The second phrase from our readings that touched me was from the Gospel story about the Samaritan woman. After Jesus tells the woman something about the living water that he would give her if only she asked, she simply states: Give me this water, sir, so that I shall not grow thirsty. Her words signal great insight. She seems to have once understood the Good News that Jesus shared with her. Jesus said to her: If only you recognized God’s gift – that is God’s revelation about how to live life – she would have peace in her life (as the story unfolds, we sense she was not at peace since the man she was living with was not her husband).

Hopefully we can come to understand and believe that God loves us so much that He came Himself in the Person of Jesus to model for us how to live this earthly life so that we might spiritually grow and learn the lessons that this life is meant to teach us. We must always remember that this earthly existence is a time of learning how to live as a person created in God’s image and likeness.

Christ is the water of wisdom. If we drink of this wisdom, given to us through the Scriptures and the Church, we will find that we begin to understand life in a new way. When we don’t understand life as God created it, we quickly become thirsty and parched. To be thirsty in this context means to lack an understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. Only the wisdom of God, expressed through the teachings of Jesus Christ, can quench our thirst for an understanding of life’s meaning.

Χριστός Ανέστη!