"Give Me to drink..."

The Samaritan Woman, known by tradition as St. Photina

This reflection on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman is an excerpt from a book we highly recommend (especially for those in the Byzantine tradition): "The Year of Grace of the Lord."

"'Give Me to drink...'.  The water that Jesus gives men to drink is the life of the soul carried to its highest potential.  We all desire a certain intensity or fullness of life.  But Jesus asks us to give Him something of our own life.  He wants us to seek in Him that intensity to which we aspire.  If to live is to love, He is thirsty for our human love.  He is so close to us, and so humble, that He asks us to love Him--'Give me to drink...'.

He will respond to our love, which is so poor, with love that is infinite: 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink; you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water.'  We seek to quench ourselves, to satisfy our thirst for love and intensity, our desire to live, by multiplying the objects we desire and that we possess.  We run, gasping for breath, after sensations, after emotions, thoughts, beauty--and yet, ever and again, our thirst is unassuaged.  'Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again...'.  But he to whom Jesus communicates His life stops being tortured by thirst--'shall never thirst'--and even finds, O miracle! that this water in him becomes a living source: 'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'  Not only does he drink at the source, but he becomes a source for others."