An Instruction for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman: On Worshiping God in Spirit and Truth

“True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such people to worship him” (Jn. 4:23).

Beloved brethren! Now we have heard in the Gospel that true servants of the true God worship Him in spirit and truth, that God “seeks”, that is, desires to have such worshippers. If God desires to have such worshippers, then it is evident that only such worshippers and servants does He accept, only such worshippers and servants are pleasing to Him. This teaching was proclaimed to us by the Son of God Himself. Let us believe the teaching of Christ! Let us receive with all our love the most holy teaching of Christ! In order to follow Him with precision, let us consider what it means to worship God the Father in spirit and truth.

Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ, as He testified of Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6). Truth is the Word of God: “Your word is truth” (Jn. 17:17; Col. 1:16). This Word was eternally in God, was spoken by God and to God; this Word is God, this Word is the Creator of all that exists, visible and invisible (Jn. 1:1, 3; Col. 1:16). This “Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory,” “the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). “No one has ever seen God: but the Word of God, the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has made him known” (Jn. 1:18). The Son of God made known to men, fully revealed to men, the God whom the Son revealed—God the Son, the Word of God; the Son of God revealed to men a truth inaccessible to them, testifying to and sealing irrefutably the truth by the most abundant bestowal of Divine grace. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1:16–17). This means: through Jesus Christ there was not granted a more or less detailed and clear notion of grace and truth, but grace itself, truth itself were substantially given to mankind, implanted in mankind. We have become sharers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).

Truth has its own proper Spirit. This Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth (Jn. 15:26, 16:13). He is the Spirit who proceeds from the Father (Jn. 15:26). He is the Holy Spirit of God (Jn. 14:26). He is the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6) as inseparably co-present with the Son, as constituting with the Father and the Son one undivided and unconfused Divine Essence. The reception of Truth is at the same time the reception of the Holy Spirit: that is why the All-Holy Truth proclaims that It will send the Holy Spirit from the Father to Its disciples. It is natural that the Holy Spirit of Truth is present where the Holy Truth acts and seals its action. Equally, where the Holy Spirit acts, there is the most abundant manifestation of Truth, as the Lord said to His disciples: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn. 16:13). Describing the wondrous relation of the Divine Word to the Divine Spirit, the Lord said of the Spirit: “He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine” (Jn. 16:14–15). The Spirit proclaims and reveals to men the Son consubstantial with Him—the Spirit, drawn by men through faith in the Son, consubstantial with the Spirit. The true Christian, the Holy Spirit builds spiritually and transforms into a dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:22); He in the inner man portrays and dwells Christ (Eph. 3:16–17). He adopts men to God, making them similar to Christ, dwelling in them the qualities of Christ (Jn. 14:6). Men adopted to God approach Him in their prayers as Father, because the Holy Spirit fully and manifestly testifies to the spirit of the man renewed by Him (Rom. 8:16) of the union of this man with God, of his adoption into God’s family. “Because you are his children”, says the Apostle, “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). Such worshippers are recognized as true worshippers of God! Such worshippers, who worship God in spirit and truth, are sought and accepted by God. Outside true Christianity there is neither knowledge of God nor the worship of God. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6), said the Lord. For the one who does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no God: “whoever denies the Son does not have the Father” (1 Jn. 2:23), “whoever does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (Jn. 3:36). It is impossible to approach God, impossible to enter into any communion with God except through our Lord Jesus Christ, the sole Mediator and Intercessor, the sole means of communion between God and men! There is no true knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ without the mediation of the Holy Spirit! “No one can say”, said the Apostle, “that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” (Rom. 8:9). Outside Christianity there is no virtue worthy of heaven! “That which is good,” said the Venerable Mark the Ascetic, “cannot be believed or done except in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit”111. Natural good works of men, flowing from our fallen nature, are unworthy of God—a nature in which good is mixed with evil, in which good is for the most part barely noticeable among the abundance of evil. Fallen nature is capable exclusively of evil, as God Himself testified: “The inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Gen. 8:21). “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children” (Lk. 11:13; Mt. 7:11). Such is the value before the Gospel and God of natural human goodness and deeds flowing from it. In vain does fallen nature glorify its loud and great good deeds! Such boasting is a witness to terrible blindness! Such boasting is an involuntary exposure of the quality of loud human deeds, excited and nourished by vainglory. The stench of pride which these whitewashed tombs emit is abominable to God: the incense of humility is pleasing to Him.

For this reason the Lord commanded renunciation to fallen and blind mankind, which is not conscious of its sorrowful fall, and which, on the contrary, sees in it some sort of magnificent triumph, seeking to develop this triumph. For salvation, renunciation of sin is necessary! But sin has so become united to us that it has transformed into our nature, into our very soul. For renunciation of sin it has become essentially necessary to renounce fallen nature, to renounce the soul (Mt. 10:39), to renounce not only obvious evil deeds but also the good deeds of the old man that are much valued and glorified by the world; it is essentially necessary to replace one’s manner of thinking with the mind of Christ, and to replace activity according to the inclination of the senses and according to the guidance of fleshly wisdom with careful fulfillment of the commandments of Christ. “If you continue in my word”, said the Lord, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:31–32). Remarkable and profound words! The direct consequence flowing from them is that sin holds man in bondage solely by means of incorrect and false concepts. Equally evident is that the destructive incorrectness of these concepts consists precisely in recognizing as good what is not essentially good, and in failing to recognize as evil what is essentially deadly evil. “Whoever is from God listens to God’s words” (Jn. 8:47), said the Lord. Brethren! Let us humble ourselves before the Lord our God! In contrast to the hardened Jews who rejected both the Lord and His teaching, let us show obedience to the Lord through submission to His most holy and saving teaching! Let us lay aside the manner of thinking delivered to us by our fallen nature and by a world hostile to God! Let us adopt for ourselves the manner of thinking offered to us by the Lord in His holy Gospel! Let us follow Truth, and we shall inherit Truth. Truth frees the human intellect from the invisible bonds of delusion with which sin has shackled it. This is not all: the all-powerful Truth, having granted spiritual freedom to the intellect, having renewed and enlivened it with life from above—the Word of God—leads it forth on the path of Christ’s commandments, “and removes the path of falsehood” from it (Ps. 118:29). The soul enlivened by Truth sings together with the inspired prophet: “I run the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free. Teach me, Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart” (Ps. 118:32–34). Such a soul will assuredly become a partaker of the Holy Spirit, who cannot fail to be present where the Divine Truth is present and reigns, who in His mysterious counsel with the All-Holy Truth speaks of Himself thus: “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts” (Ps. 118:63)112.

As long as man remains in his fallen nature, he is plunged into the darkness of profound ignorance: he does not know how to pray as he ought, nor does he know what to ask for (Rom. 8:26), he is incapable of serving God. Faith in Christ alone furnishes knowledge of Truth; faith expressed by fulfillment of Christ’s commandments attracts into the believing heart the grace of the Holy Spirit, as the divinely inspired prophet said: “I open my mouth and sigh for your commandments” (Ps. 118:131). Only a true Christian, a Christian by faith and works, can be a true worshipper of God, worshipping and serving God as Father, in spirit and truth. Amen.

Mark the Ascetic. On the Law of the Spirit. Philokalia, Part 1, Chapter 2.

According to the explanation of the Venerable Pimen the Great, placed in the Alphabetical Patericon.