Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman, Photina.
Cast: Jesus Christ: as Himself, from the Shroud of Turin
Music: The world’s oldest known melody, Hurrian Hymn No. 6,
in an arrangement for solo string instruments.
The Samaritan sect of Judaism claims to have the oldest Torah scroll. They say that Mount Gerizim in the West Bank is the Holy Mountain and not the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Neither Jerusalem nor Gerizim are relevant (for Christians).
Talks With a Samaritan Woman
John chapter 4, verses 1 to 42
Now I, Jesus, learned that the Pharisees had heard that I was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not I who baptized, but my disciples. So I left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
I had to go through Samaria because the way was shorter. So I came with my disciples to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, and I sat down by the well because I was tired from the journey. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and I asked her, “Will you give me a drink?” (My disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman answered me, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews, do not associate with Samaritans.)
I answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
I answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
I answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
I told her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
I said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” I replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
“I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin
Just then, my disciples returned and were surprised to find me talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of town and made their way toward me.
Meanwhile, my disciples urged me, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But I said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then my disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” I said, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now, the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
Thus, the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for.
Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in me because of the woman’s testimony: “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to me, they urged me to stay with them, and I stayed two days. And because of my words, many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Amen!
The Woman at the Well
The woman that Jesus spoke to at Jacob’s well has been named by tradition as Photina, in Greek, “The Enlightened One.” She and her entire family underwent baptism by the Apostles following their encounter with Christ, and they later joined the early Church as evangelists.
Believing in the Lord, Photina went to preach His Gospel with her two sons Victor and Josiah, and with her five sisters, Anatolia, Phota, Photida, Parasceva and Cyriaca. They went to Carthage in Africa. There they were arrested, taken to Rome and thrown into prison
Photini and her offspring were finally called before Emperor Nero, who gave them orders to abandon their Christian beliefs. They chose to endure different forms of torture instead of complying. Following numerous attempts to coerce her into idolatry, the emperor gave the order to cast her down a well. In the year 66, Photini surrendered her life.
St. Photini is commemorated on three occasions during the year: February 26 (Greek Orthodox tradition), March 20 (Slavic tradition, as “Svetlana”), and the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman on the 5th Sunday of Pascha, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
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