Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.1–15.23

It is not new to the ears of your Charity that the evangelist John, like an eagle, flies higher, transcends the mist of the earth, and gazes on the light of truth with steadier eyes. Many things from his Gospel have already been expounded through our ministry with the Lord's help; and in order there follows this reading, which was recited today. What I am about to say, by the Lord's gift, many of you will hear in such a way as rather to recognize than to learn. Yet attention ought not on that account to be sluggish, because it is not first learning but recognition. What was read, and the reading we have in hand to expound, is that the Lord Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. For great mysteries were spoken there, and likenesses of great things, feeding the hungry soul, refreshing the languid.

For “when the Lord heard that the Pharisees had learned that he was making more disciples than John, and baptizing more (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples), he left the land of Judea and went away again into Galilee.” We need not discuss this at length, lest, lingering over what is plain, we be pressed for time to examine and open what is obscure. Certainly, if the Lord had known that the Pharisees had learned about him that he was making more disciples and baptizing more in such a way that it would avail them for salvation, so as to follow him, so that they too might be disciples and want to be baptized by him, he would rather not have left the land of Judea but would have stayed there for their sake. But because he knew their knowledge, he knew at the same time their envy: that they had learned this not in order to follow but to persecute; so he went away from there. He could indeed, even while present, not be seized by them if he did not will it, not be killed if he did not will it, for he could also not have been born if he did not will it. But because in everything he did as man he was giving an example to men who would believe in him (for any servant of God does not sin if he withdraws to another place, seeing perhaps the fury of those who persecute him or seek his life for evil; but a servant of God might think he was sinning if he did this, unless the Lord had gone before in doing it), that good teacher did this in order to lead, not because he feared.

Perhaps this too may trouble someone: why it was said, “Jesus was baptizing more than John,” and after it was said, “was baptizing,” there was added, “although Jesus did not baptize, but his disciples.” What then? Had something false been said, and was it corrected when it was added, “although Jesus did not baptize, but his disciples”? Or are both true, because Jesus both baptized and did not baptize? He baptized, because he himself cleansed; he did not baptize, because he did not himself dip. The disciples supplied the service of the body; he supplied the aid of majesty. For when would he cease from baptizing, so long as he does not cease from cleansing? Of him it was said by the same John, speaking in the person of John the Baptist: “This is he who baptizes.” So Jesus still baptizes; and as long as we are to be baptized, Jesus baptizes. Let a man approach the lower minister without anxiety; for he has a higher master.

But perhaps someone says: Christ baptizes in the spirit, not in the body. As though anyone were endowed even with the sacrament of bodily and visible baptism by the gift of anyone other than him! Do you want to know that he himself baptizes, not only with the Spirit but also with water? Hear the apostle: “As Christ,” he says, “loved the Church and gave himself up for her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word, that he might present to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind.” Cleansing her. How? “By the washing of water in the word.” What is the baptism of Christ? The washing of water in the word. Take away the water, it is not baptism; take away the word, it is not baptism.

Now, then, with these things set out beforehand, through which he came to his conversation with that woman, let us see what remains, full of mysteries and pregnant with sacraments. “Now he had to pass through Samaria,” it says. “So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Jacob's spring was there.” It was a well; but every well is a spring, though not every spring is a well. For where water flows out of the earth and is available for use to those who draw it, it is called a spring; but if it is at hand and on the surface, it is called only a spring, while if it is deep down, it is called a well, yet without losing the name of spring.

“So Jesus, tired from the journey, was sitting thus at the spring. It was about the sixth hour.” Now the mysteries begin. For not without reason is Jesus tired; not without reason is the Power of God tired; not without reason is he tired through whom the tired are refreshed; not without reason is he tired at whose absence we grow tired, at whose presence we are strengthened. Yet Jesus is tired, and tired from the journey; and he sits, and sits by the well, and sits tired at the sixth hour. All these things hint at something, they mean to point to something; they make us attentive, they urge us to knock. May he then open to us and to you who deigned to urge us so as to say, “Knock, and it will be opened to you.” It was for you that Jesus was tired from the journey. We find Jesus as Power, and we find Jesus weak; Jesus strong and weak. Strong, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: he was in the beginning with God.” Do you want to see how strong this Son of God is? “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; and they were made without labor. What then is stronger than he, through whom all things were made without labor? Do you want to know him weak? “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Christ's strength created you; Christ's weakness re-created you. Christ's strength made what was not to be; Christ's weakness made what was not perish. He founded us by his strength; he sought us by his weakness.

So he who is weak nourishes the weak, as a hen her chicks; for he likened himself to her: “How often,” he says to Jerusalem, “have I wanted to gather your children under my wings, as a hen her chicks, and you would not!” You see, brothers, how a hen becomes weak with her chicks. In no other bird is it recognized that she is a mother. We see all sorts of sparrows building nests before our eyes; we see swallows, storks, doves building nests every day; and except when we see them in their nests we do not recognize that they are parents. But the hen becomes so weak with her chicks that even if the chicks themselves are not following, and you do not see the young, you still recognize the mother. She becomes so, with wings drooping, feathers ruffled, voice hoarse, all her limbs lowered and cast down, that, as I said, even if you do not see the young, you still perceive the mother. So, then, Jesus is weak, tired from the journey. His journey is the flesh taken on for us. For how does he who is everywhere, who is nowhere absent, have a journey? Where does he go, or from where, except that he would not come to us unless he took the form of visible flesh? Since, then, he deigned to come to us in such a way as to appear in the form of a servant by taking flesh, the very taking of flesh is his journey. So what else does “tired from the journey” mean but tired in the flesh? Jesus is weak in the flesh; but do not you be weak: in his weakness be strong, because “the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Under this image of things, Adam, who was a type of the one to come, gave us a great token of a mystery; or rather, God gave it in him. For he was also found worthy to receive a wife while sleeping, and from his rib a wife was made for him; because from Christ sleeping on the cross the Church was to be made, from his side, that is, the side of one sleeping; for from the side of him hanging on the cross, pierced with a lance, the sacraments of the Church flowed out. But why did I want to say this, brothers? Because the weakness of Christ makes us strong. A great image went before there. God could have taken flesh from the man to make the woman, and it seems as though that might have been more fitting. For the weaker sex was being made, and weakness ought rather to have been made from flesh than from bone; for bones are the firmer parts in the flesh. He did not take flesh to make the woman; but he took a bone, and when the bone was taken the woman was formed, and flesh filled up the place of the bone. He could have given back bone for bone; he could have taken, to make the woman, not a rib but flesh. What then did he signify? The woman was made in the rib as if strong; Adam was made, as it were, weak in the flesh. It is Christ and the Church: his weakness is our strength.

Why, then, at the sixth hour? Because in the sixth age of the world. Reckon in the Gospel as one hour one age, from Adam to Noah; the second from Noah to Abraham; the third from Abraham to David; the fourth from David to the deportation to Babylon; the fifth from the deportation to Babylon to the baptism of John: from then the sixth is under way. Why do you wonder? Jesus came, and by humbling himself he came to the well. He came tired, because he bore weak flesh. At the sixth hour, because in the sixth age of the world. To the well, because to the depth of this dwelling place of ours. Hence it is said in the Psalms, “Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord.” He sat, as I said, because he was humbled.

“And a woman came.” A figure of the Church, not yet justified but now to be justified; for this is what the discourse is about. She came unknowing, she found him, and he deals with her. Let us see what, let us see why. “A woman of Samaria came to draw water.” The Samaritans did not belong to the nation of the Jews: for they were foreigners, though they lived in neighboring lands. It would take long to unfold the origin of the Samaritans, lest much hold us back and we not say what is necessary: it is enough, then, that we count the Samaritans among foreigners. And lest you think I have said this more boldly than truly, hear the Lord Jesus himself, what he said of that Samaritan, one of the ten lepers he had cleansed, who alone returned to give thanks: “Were not ten cleansed? And where are the nine? Was there no one to give glory to God except this foreigner?” It belongs to the image of the matter that this woman, who bore the type of the Church, came from foreigners: for the Church was to come from the Gentiles, foreign to the race of the Jews. Let us, then, hear ourselves in her, and recognize ourselves in her, and in her give thanks to God for ourselves. For she was a figure, not the reality; because she both set forth the figure beforehand, and the reality came about. For she believed in him who set forth a figure for us through her. So she came to draw water. She had come simply to draw water, as men or women usually do.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ For his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. So that Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” You see that they were foreigners: the Jews did not use their vessels at all. And because the woman was carrying with her a vessel to draw water, she was amazed that a Jew asked her for a drink, which the Jews were not accustomed to do. But he who was asking for a drink was thirsting for the woman's faith.

Finally, hear who it is that asks for a drink. “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give me a drink,” you would perhaps have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’” He asks for a drink, and he promises a drink. He is in need as one about to receive, and he abounds as one about to satisfy. “If you knew,” he says, “the gift of God.” The gift of God is the Holy Spirit. But he still speaks to the woman in a veiled way, and little by little he enters her heart. Perhaps he is already teaching. For what is sweeter and kinder than this exhortation? “If you knew the gift of God, and knew who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would perhaps ask, and he would give you living water.” Up to this point he keeps her in suspense. Commonly, “living water” is what comes out of a spring. For water collected from rain in ponds or cisterns is not called living water. And if it has flowed from a spring and has been collected and stands in some place, and does not admit to itself that from which it flowed, but its course has been broken off and it has been separated, as it were, from the channel of the spring, it is not called living water; but that water is called living which is caught as it flows. Such water was in that spring. What then was he promising that he was asking for?

Yet the woman, kept in suspense, says: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.” See how she understood “living water”: namely, the water that was in that spring. You want to give me living water, and I carry something to draw with, and you carry nothing. The living water is here; how are you going to give it to me? Understanding something else and thinking carnally, she is in a way knocking, so that the teacher may open what is shut. She was knocking out of ignorance, not zeal; still to be pitied, not yet to be instructed.

The Lord says something plainer about that living water. For the woman had said, “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” You cannot give me this living water, since you have no vessel to draw with: perhaps you promise another spring? Can you be better than our father, who dug this well and used it himself with his family? Let the Lord, then, say what he called living water. “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” The Lord spoke more openly: “It will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Whoever drinks of this water will never thirst.” What is plainer than that he was promising not visible but invisible water? What is plainer than that he was speaking not carnally but spiritually?

Yet that woman still thinks of the flesh. She was delighted at not thirsting, and thought that this had been promised her by the Lord according to the flesh. This will indeed happen, but in the resurrection of the dead. She wanted it now. For God had once granted his servant Elijah that for forty days he should neither hunger nor thirst. He who could grant this for forty days, could he not grant it always? She sighed for it, not wanting to be in need, not wanting to labor. She was forced to come constantly to that spring, to be burdened with a weight by which her need might be supplied, and when what she had drawn was used up, to return again; and this labor was daily for her, because that need was relieved, not extinguished. So, delighted by such a gift, she asks him to give her living water.

Nevertheless, let us not pass over the fact that the Lord was promising something spiritual. What does “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again” mean? It is true of this water, and it is true of what that water signified. For the water in the well is the pleasure of the world in its dark depth: from there men draw it with the water jar of desires. For bending down, they let down desire, so as to reach pleasure drawn from the depth; and they enjoy pleasure, with desire going before and let down first. For he who has not first let down desire cannot reach pleasure. So take the water jar as desire, and the water from the depth as pleasure: when anyone has reached the pleasure of this world, whether it is food, drink, a bath, a show, sexual intercourse, will he not thirst again? So “whoever drinks of this water,” he says, “will thirst again; but if he receives water from me, he will never thirst.” “We shall be satisfied,” it says, “with the good things of your house.” From what water, then, is he going to give, if not from that of which it is said, “With you is the fountain of life”? For how will those thirst who “will be inebriated with the abundance of your house”?

So he was promising a certain richness and fullness of the Holy Spirit; and she did not yet understand; and not understanding, what did she answer? “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst nor come here to draw.’” Need drove her to labor, and weakness refused the labor. Would that she had heard, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you”! For this is what Jesus was saying to her, so that she might labor no more; but she did not yet understand.

Finally, wanting her to understand, “Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’” What does “Call your husband” mean? Did he want to give her that water through her husband? Or, because she did not understand, did he want to teach her through her husband? Perhaps as the apostle says of women, “But if they want to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home”? But there it is said, “let them ask their husbands at home,” where Jesus is not present to teach; and indeed it is said to women whom the apostle forbade to speak in church. But when the Lord himself was there, and was speaking in person to one present, what need was there for him to speak to her through her husband? Did he speak through her husband to Mary, sitting at his feet and receiving his word, when Martha, very busy with much serving, was even grumbling about her sister's happiness? So, my brothers, let us hear and understand what the Lord said to the woman, “Call your husband.” For perhaps he says to our soul too, “Call your husband.” Let us inquire about the soul's husband too. Why is not Jesus himself already the soul's true husband? Let understanding be present, for what we are going to say is hardly grasped except by the attentive: so let understanding be present, that it may be grasped; and understanding itself will perhaps be the soul's husband.

So Jesus, seeing that the woman did not understand, and wanting her to understand, said, “Call your husband.” For this is why you do not know what I say: because your understanding is not present. I speak according to the Spirit; you hear according to the flesh. What I say has nothing to do with the pleasure of the ears, nor with the eyes, nor with smell, nor with taste, nor with touch; it is grasped by the mind alone, drawn up by the understanding alone. That understanding is not present in you: how can you grasp what I say? Call your husband: bring your understanding to bear. For what is it to you to have a soul? It is no great thing, for a beast has one too. In what are you better? In that you have understanding, which a beast does not have. What then does “Call your husband” mean? You do not grasp me, you do not understand me: I speak to you of the gift of God, but you think of the flesh; you do not want to thirst according to the flesh, I am addressing the spirit. Your understanding is absent: call your husband. “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.” So, my brothers, to have a soul and not have understanding, that is, not to use it nor live according to it, is the life of a beast. For there is in us something beastlike by which we live in the flesh, but it must be ruled by the understanding. For the understanding rules from above the motions of the soul as it moves according to the flesh and longs to flow out immoderately into carnal delights. Which should be called the husband: the one who rules or the one who is ruled? Without doubt, when life is well ordered, the understanding, which belongs to the soul itself, rules the soul. For the understanding is not something other than the soul, but is something of the soul; just as the eye is not something other than the flesh, but is something of the flesh. And though the eye is something of the flesh, it alone enjoys the light: the other members of the flesh can be bathed in light, but cannot perceive light; the eye alone is both bathed in it and enjoys it. So in our soul there is something called the understanding. This part of the soul, which is called understanding and mind, is enlightened by a higher light. Now that higher light by which the human mind is enlightened is God: “For that was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” Such a light was Christ; such a light was speaking with the woman; and she was not present with her understanding, to be enlightened by that light, and not only bathed in it but also to enjoy it. So the Lord, as though saying, “I want to enlighten, and the one to be enlightened is not here,” says, “Call your husband”: bring your understanding to bear, through which you may be taught, by which you may be ruled. So think of the soul apart from the understanding as the woman, and of having understanding as the husband. But this husband does not rule his wife well unless he is ruled by a higher one. “For the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ.” The head of the man was speaking with the woman, and the man was not present. And as though the Lord were saying, “Bring your head, so that he may receive his head”: so “call your husband and come here”; that is, be here, be present: for you are as though absent, while you do not understand the voice of the Truth that is present. Be present, but not alone; be present with your husband.

And still, not yet having called that husband, she does not understand; she still thinks of the flesh, for the husband is absent. “I have no husband,” she says. And the Lord goes on, and speaks mysteries. You may understand that this woman really had no husband at that time, but was living with some unlawful man, an adulterer rather than a husband. And the Lord said to her, “You have said well, ‘I have no husband.’” Why then did you say, “Call your husband”? And hear that the Lord knew well that she had no husband. He said to her, and so on. Lest the woman perhaps think that the Lord said, “You have said well, ‘I have no husband,’” because he had learned it from the woman, and not because he knew it by his divinity, hear something you did not say: “For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”

Again he compels us to examine something more subtly about these five husbands. Many have understood, not absurdly indeed, nor altogether improbably, that this woman's five husbands are the five books of Moses. For the Samaritans used them and were under the same law; for that is where they got circumcision too. But since what follows confines us, “And the one you now have is not your husband,” it seems to me that we can more easily take the soul's five former husbands to be the five senses of the body. For when anyone is born, before he can use mind and reason, he is ruled only by the senses of the flesh. In a little child the soul seeks or shuns what is heard, what is seen, what is smelled, what is tasted, what is felt by touch. It seeks whatever soothes, it shuns whatever offends these five senses. For pleasure soothes these five senses, pain offends them. The soul lives first according to these five senses, as five husbands, because it is ruled by them. Why are they called husbands? Because they are lawful. For they were made by God and given to the soul by God. The soul that is ruled by these five senses and lives under these five husbands is still weak. But when it comes to the years of exercising reason, if the best discipline and the teaching of wisdom take it up, there succeeds to those five husbands in ruling it none but a true and lawful husband, better than they, who rules it better, who rules it for eternity, cultivates it for eternity, instructs it for eternity. For those five senses do not rule us for eternity, but for seeking or shunning these temporal things. But when the understanding, steeped in wisdom, begins to rule the soul, it knows not only how to avoid a pit and walk on level ground, which the eyes show to the weak soul; nor only to hear melodious sounds with pleasure and reject discordant ones; or to delight in pleasant smells and reject stenches; or to be captivated by sweetness and offended by bitterness; or to be soothed by smooth things and hurt by rough ones. For all these are necessary to the weak soul. What rule, then, is applied through that understanding? It is to distinguish not white and black, but just and unjust, good and bad, useful and useless, chastity and immodesty, so as to love the one and avoid the other; love and hatred, so as to be in the one and not in the other.

This husband had not succeeded those five husbands in this woman. For where he does not succeed, error reigns. For when the soul begins to be capable of reason, it is ruled either by a wise mind or by error; but error does not rule, it destroys. So after those five senses that woman was still in error, and error was tossing her about. But this error was not a lawful husband but an adulterer; therefore the Lord says to her, “You have said well, ‘I have no husband.’ For you have had five husbands”: the five senses of the flesh ruled you first; you came to the age of using reason, and you did not come to wisdom, but fell into error. So after those five husbands, “the one you now have is not your husband.” And what was he, if not a husband, but an adulterer? So call not the adulterer, but your husband, so that you may grasp me with understanding, not think something false about me in error. For the woman was still in error, thinking of that water, when the Lord was already speaking of the Holy Spirit. Why was she in error, except that she had an adulterer, not a husband? So take away from here this adulterer who corrupts you, and go, call your husband. Call him, and come, so that you may understand me.

“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet.’” The husband has begun to come, but has not yet fully come. She thought the Lord a prophet. He was indeed a prophet too: for he says of himself, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.” Again it was said of him to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you”: like, that is, in the form of the flesh, not in the eminence of majesty. So we find the Lord Jesus called a prophet. Accordingly this woman is no longer much in error. “I see,” she says, “that you are a prophet.” She begins to call her husband, to shut out the adulterer: “I see that you are a prophet.” And she begins to ask about what used to trouble her. For there had been a dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews, because the Jews worshiped God in the temple built by Solomon, while the Samaritans, situated far from there, did not worship in it. Therefore the Jews boasted that they were better, because they worshiped God in the temple. “For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans”; for the Samaritans said to them: “Why do you boast, and claim that you are better than we because you have a temple that we do not have? Did our fathers, who pleased God, worship in that temple? Did they not worship on this mountain where we are? So,” they say, “we do better to pray to God on this mountain, where our fathers prayed.” Both sides contended in ignorance, because they had no husband: the one puffed up for the temple, the other for the mountain, against each other.