photo: brooklyn-church.org
In the Gospel reading of the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman—the fifth week after Pascha—one of the most important theological issues is addressed—the theme of Living Water. This is the water which Christ offers to us.
The media serves as a deathly water, killing all who live in each home. Having drunk from this tainted source, people become filled with anger and hatred for others, or fall asleep in the darkness of false illusions. These times of unorthodox moral degeneracy, and the loss of spiritual direction have revealed to us the dead and grotesque masks of this terrible shadow theater, which we now call life.
Man, therefore, instinctively thirsts to find that true Living Water, which will endow the clear purity of life-giving Grace; the soul yearns for it, the withered heart longs for it.
The source of this water is within ourselves, in the deep well of our spiritual heart. In order to drink from God's grace, one does not need to go up to the mountain peaks; one needs to go down, deep into one’s nous, gradually freeing oneself from all thoughts and mental gymnastics, gaining a deep serenity of mind and heart, in prayerful unity with God.
You can get there only by calming your troubled soul, and taming your wild mind, which now and again aimlessly ride through the endless desert of this illusory world. Having planted the mind in the iron cage of inner attention, we will be able to observe how it will try to break out in bestial fashion. But after the mind is tamed and becomes meek, with attention to prayer, the Living Water of eternal life will begin to seep into the well of the soul.
We can never find Christ anywhere except in the depths of our own hearts. His secret domain is within ourselves. But all our enemies are in the same place. They are the ones who block the entrance to this well. In order to make right immediately with all your enemies and offenders, it is enough to overcome your anger and resentment. To defeat everyone and everything that scares us, you need to get rid of any earthly attachments. To make all thoughts and passions which torment us subside, one must acquire humility and trust in God.
The only thing more dreadful then hell is laziness on the path to salvation. If there is no grace in the soul of man, then he is wholly under the control of the devil. And neither the priesthood, nor titles, nor miters, nor awarded jeweled crosses with decorations, nothing of what seems so important and honorable, can save from this power. Hell lives in our passions, which are hidden under the cover of the soul, in thoughts that are buried in the depths of the mind. From the smallest of our thoughts to the farthest borders of the sphere of reason—all these things are the control of satan. So says the Holy Fathers, who knew this from their own experience.
Just as our soul is covered with the blanket of the body, so the Lord is hidden under the cover of this world. God is not connected with the world, just as our spirit is not connected with the body, nor with passions, nor with thoughts. As long as our mind is swallowed up by what is earthly, the soul cannot meet God in its own spirit. Therefore, not having a face-to-face meeting with Him, we hide behind the words concerning God, bask in thoughts about Him, feed on reasoning about grace. But this food does not satisfy our hungry and thirsty soul.
The attachment of the human mind to the world and narcissism—these are the main causes of human suffering. Therefore, the only way to be saved from these torments is the lessening of the world and our place in it. Natural disasters, wars, epidemics, illnesses and the rejection of personal desires wash away from our eyes the veil of the charm of this world. In an instant, friends become enemies, the state of the world changes into a fierce war, disasters and destruction come instead of peace, illness hides behind health, and a desert of poverty hides behind an oasis of prosperity. Changing one place with another, God's Providence brings us back to Christ, as prodigal children in the embrace of the Father. He wants us to understand that we have no friends, no enemies, no money, no health, no children, no parents—there is nothing that we can firmly possess, and at the same time be confident in our safety. Only God and His love is a constant and unchanging objective reality.
The whole world, the whole Universe, everything that surrounds us, including ourselves, was created by God ex nihilo and in itself does not possess self-meaning.
As the blind cannot see the sun, so the lazy will never reach the well of Living Water. You can’t sit idly by in the hope that God has already saved us, or will somehow save us later. The Lord gave us the Water of Life, but you need to go to it with your own feet. The world is deceiving, the mind is lying, thoughts lead us by the nose. Charm (spiritual self-seduction) is forgetfulness, even for a moment, of the memory of Christ.
As soon as our mind plunges into the swamp of thoughts, we immediately find ourselves in a state of delusion. The whole world lives in this state. The external vanity of the body and the internal vanity of the mind contribute to this. It is no coincidence that Christ has repeatedly said that cares, a multitude of cares, and the vanity of this world are the main causes of our destruction. In the heat of “necessary and urgent matters”, a person lives his short century, and only on his deathbed understands that in fact he did not need all this.
Only peace of soul, combined with the memory of God, leads us to the calling of sons of God (Matt. 5:9). Without this peace, you can only jump while running on the ground, but it is impossible to fly up. Peacefulness of the soul in all life circumstances is the basis of the foundations of spiritual life. The first sign of the clouding of the mind and the dying of the soul is the forgetfulness of mortal memory, and laziness in prayer. He who is bound with his whole being to everything earthly is painfully dying. After physical death, thoughts that swarmed all his life in his mind will begin to painfully lead him through heavy aerial toll houses. Most of the thoughts that arise in our head during the day are sinful. These thoughts give rise to passions, and sinful habits and attachments arise from passions. All this drains life out of us, takes away strength, leads to illness and decrepitude. So, even during earthly life, a person is immersed in the genuine torment of hell.
Living Water flows from a well dug in the feat of renunciation, when the soul suffers sorrows and torments, like a woman giving birth to her child. But when Grace comes, then deliverance from earthly burdens and cares comes with it, and great Joy comes, the joy of salvation in Christ.
