Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.24–16.7

Yet what does the Lord now teach the woman, as one whose husband has begun to be present? “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me.’” For the Church will come, as is said in the Song of Songs; she will come and pass over from the beginning of faith. She will come to pass over, and she cannot pass over except from the beginning of faith. Rightly, now that her husband is present, she hears, “Woman, believe me.” For now there is in you one who may believe, because your husband is present. You began to be present with understanding when you called me a prophet. “Woman, believe me”: for unless you believe, you will not understand. So, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming.” When? “And it is now.” What hour, then? “When the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”: not on this mountain, not in the temple, but in spirit and truth. “For the Father seeks such to worship him.” Why does the Father seek such to worship him, not on a mountain, not in a temple, but in spirit and truth? “God is spirit.” If God were a body, he would have to be worshiped on a mountain, because a mountain is bodily; he would have to be worshiped in a temple, because a temple is bodily. “God is spirit; and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

We have heard, and it is plain: we had gone outside, we have been sent within. “O if I could find,” you used to say, “some high and solitary mountain! For I believe that God is on high; he hears me better from on high.” Because you are on a mountain, do you think yourself near to God, and that you are quickly heard, as though calling from close by? He dwells on high, but he looks on the lowly. “The Lord is near.” To whom? To the lofty, perhaps? “To those who have broken their heart.” It is a wonderful thing: he dwells on high and draws near to the lowly; he looks on the lowly, but the lofty he knows from afar; he sees the proud from afar, and he draws the less near to them the higher they seem to themselves. Were you looking, then, for a mountain? Come down, so as to reach him. But do you want to ascend? Ascend; do not look for a mountain. “Ascents,” it says, “in his heart” (the psalm says this), “in the valley of weeping.” A valley has lowliness. So do everything within. And if perhaps you are looking for some high place, some holy place, make yourself within a temple for God. “For the temple of God is holy, which you are.” Do you want to pray in a temple? Pray within yourself. But first be a temple of God, because he will hear the one who prays in his temple.

So “the hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. We worship what we know; you worship what you do not know; for salvation is from the Jews.” He gave much to the Jews; but do not take this of the reprobate ones. Take it of that wall to which another was joined, so that, reconciled in the cornerstone, which is Christ, they might be united. For one wall is from the Jews, one from the Gentiles: these walls are far from each other, but only until they are joined in the corner. But the foreigners were strangers and aliens from the covenants of God. It is in this sense, then, that it was said, “We worship what we know.” It was said indeed in the person of the Jews, but not of all the Jews, not of the reprobate Jews, but of such as the apostles were, such as the prophets were, such as were all those saints who sold all they had and laid the price of their goods at the apostles' feet. “For God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew.”

This woman heard this, and added to it. She had already called him a prophet; she saw that the one with whom she was speaking was saying such things as were already more than a prophet's; and see what she answered: “The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; so when he comes, he will show us all things.’” What does this mean? Now, she says, the Jews contend for the temple, and we contend for the mountain: when he comes, he will both spurn the mountain and overthrow the temple; he will teach us all things, so that we may know how to worship in spirit and truth. She knew who could teach her, but she did not yet recognize him who was already teaching her. So now she was worthy to have him revealed to her. Now Messiah means anointed; anointed in Greek is Christ, in Hebrew Messiah; hence in Punic too “Messe” means “anoint.” For these languages are related and neighboring: Hebrew, Punic, and Syriac.

So “the woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; so when he comes, he will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’” She has called her husband: the husband has become the head of the woman, Christ has become the head of the husband. Now the woman is set in order in faith, and is ruled so as to live well. After she heard this, “I who speak to you am he,” what more could he say, when Christ the Lord willed to reveal himself to the woman to whom he had said, “Believe me”?

“And at once his disciples came, and they marveled that he was speaking with a woman.” That he who had come to seek what was lost was seeking a lost woman, this they marveled at. For they marveled at good, they did not suspect evil. “Yet no one said, ‘What are you seeking?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’”

“So the woman left her water jar.” Having heard, “I who speak to you am he,” and having received Christ the Lord into her heart, what should she do but now leave her water jar and run to preach the gospel? She threw away desire and hastened to proclaim the truth. Let those who want to preach the gospel learn: let them throw away their water jar at the well. Remember what I said above about the water jar: it was a vessel with which water was drawn; it is called by a Greek name, hydria, because in Greek water is called hydōr; as if it were called “water vessel.” So she threw away the water jar, which was now no use but a burden; for she was eager to be filled with that water. To announce Christ, having thrown off her burden, she ran to the city and said to the men, “Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did.” Step by step, lest they become angry, as it were, and indignant, and persecute. “Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did: can this be the Christ?” “They went out of the city and were coming to him.”

“Meanwhile the disciples were asking him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’” For they had gone to buy food and had come back. “But he said, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’” What wonder if that woman did not understand the water? See, the disciples do not yet understand the food. But he heard their thoughts, and now instructs them as a teacher: not in a roundabout way, as with her whose husband he was still seeking, but now openly: “My food,” he says, “is to do the will of him who sent me.” So his drink too, in that woman, was to do the will of him who had sent him. That is why he said, “I thirst, give me a drink”: namely, that he might work faith in her, and drink her faith, and take her into his body; for his body is the Church. “This, then,” he says, “is my food, to do the will of him who sent me.”

“Do you not say that there are still four months, and the harvest comes?” He was aglow for the work, and was arranging to send workers. You reckon four months to the harvest; I show you another harvest, white and ready. “See, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are already white for harvest.” So he is going to send reapers. “For in this the saying is true, that one sows and another reaps, so that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. I sent you to reap what you did not labor for: others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” What then? He sent reapers, not sowers? Where did he send reapers? Where others had already labored. For where labor had already been done, there had certainly been sowing; and what had been sown had now become ripe and needed the sickle and the threshing. Where then were the reapers to be sent? Where the prophets had already preached; for they were the sowers. For if they were not the sowers, how had “I know that the Messiah is coming” reached that woman? This woman was already ripe fruit, and the harvests were white and needed the sickle. So I have sent you: where? To reap what you did not sow: others sowed, and you have entered into their labors. Who labored? Abraham himself, Isaac, and Jacob. Read their labors: in all their labors there is prophecy of Christ, and therefore they were sowers. Moses and the other patriarchs and all the prophets, how much they endured in that cold when they were sowing! So in Judea the harvest was already ready. Rightly was there a crop, as it were, ripe there, when so many thousands of people brought the price of their goods and, laying it at the apostles' feet, their shoulders freed from worldly burdens, followed Christ the Lord: truly a ripe harvest. What came of it? From that very harvest a few grains were thrown out, and they sowed the whole world, and another harvest rises which is to be reaped at the end of the world. Of this harvest it is said, “Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.” To this harvest, then, not apostles but angels will be sent: “The reapers,” he says, “are angels.” So this harvest grows among the weeds and waits to be cleansed at the end. But that harvest was already ripe to which the disciples were first sent, where the prophets had labored. Yet see, brothers, what was said: “that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.” They had labors unequal in time, but they will enjoy joy equally; they are to receive together their reward, eternal life.

“And many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word; and they said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of your words that we believe; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’” This too must be briefly noted, since the reading has ended. The woman announced first, and at the woman's testimony the Samaritans believed and asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days, and more believed; and when they had believed, they said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your word that we believe, but we ourselves have come to know, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world”: first through report, afterward through his presence. So it happens today with those who are outside and are not yet Christians: Christ is announced through Christian friends; as though that woman, that is, the Church, were announcing him, they come to Christ, they believe through this report; he stays with them two days, that is, he gives them the two commandments of love; and many more believe in him, and more firmly, because he is truly the Savior of the world.

Today's Gospel reading follows yesterday's reading and is set before us for discussion. In it the meanings are not difficult to investigate, but they are worthy of proclamation, worthy of admiration and praise. So let us recall this passage of the Gospel with commendation rather than treat it with difficulty. For after the two days he had spent in Samaria, Jesus went away into Galilee, where he had been brought up. And the evangelist goes on to say: “For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” It was not because he had no honor in Samaria that Jesus left Samaria after two days; for Samaria was not his country, but Galilee. Since, then, he had left Samaria so quickly and come to Galilee, where he had been brought up, how does he testify that a prophet has no honor in his own country? It seems rather that he could have testified that a prophet had no honor in his own country if he had disdained to go into Galilee and had remained in Samaria.

Let your Charity attend, then, to a mystery of no small importance that is suggested to us, the Lord prompting and granting what I am to say. You have learned the question proposed; look for its solution. But let us repeat the problem, to make the solution desirable. It troubles us why the evangelist said, “For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” Troubled by this, we went back over the preceding words to find why the evangelist wanted to say this; and we find that his preceding words narrate that after two days he set out from Samaria for Galilee. Is this, then, why you said, O evangelist, that Jesus testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country: because after two days he left Samaria and hastened to come into Galilee? Indeed, it seems to me rather more fitting to understand that if Jesus had no honor in his own country, he would not have hurried to it, leaving Samaria. But unless I am mistaken, or rather, since it is true and I am not mistaken, the evangelist saw better than I what he was saying; he saw the truth better than I, he who drank it from the Lord's breast. For he is John the evangelist, who among all the disciples reclined on the Lord's breast, and whom the Lord, though owing love to all, loved more than the rest. Would he, then, be mistaken, and I think rightly? Rather, if I am wise in a godly way, let me obediently hear what he said, so as to deserve to understand what he understood.

Receive, then, dearly beloved, what I think here, without prejudice if you have perceived something better. For we all have one Master, and we are fellow pupils in one school. This, then, is what I think; and see whether what I think is not either true or near the truth. He spent two days in Samaria, and the Samaritans believed in him; he spent so many days in Galilee, and the Galileans did not believe in him. Go over again, or recall to memory, both yesterday's reading and sermon. He came into Samaria, where that woman had first proclaimed him, with whom he had spoken great mysteries at Jacob's well; having seen and heard him, the Samaritans believed in him because of the woman's word, and believed more firmly because of his word, and more believed: so it is written. Having spent two days there (by which number of days the number of the two commandments is mystically commended, on which two commandments the whole law and the prophets depend, as you remember we pointed out yesterday), he goes on into Galilee and comes to the city of Cana in Galilee, where he made water wine. And there, when he turned water into wine, as John himself writes, his disciples believed in him; and certainly the house was full of crowds of guests. So great a miracle was done, and none believed in him except his disciples. To this city of Galilee he now returned. And see, a certain official, whose son was ill, came to him and began to ask him to come down to that city or house and heal his son; for he was beginning to die. Did he who was asking not believe? What do you expect to hear from me? Ask the Lord what he thought of him. When asked, he answered thus: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe.” He rebukes a man lukewarm or cold in faith, or of no faith at all, but wanting to test, by his son's healing, what kind of man Christ was, who he was, how much he could do. For we have heard the words of the one asking, we do not see the heart of the one distrusting; but he pronounced judgment who both heard the words and saw into the heart. Finally, the evangelist himself shows by the testimony of his narrative that he who wanted the Lord to come to his house to heal his son had not yet believed. For after it was reported to him that his son was well, and he found that he had been healed at the hour when the Lord had said, “Go, your son lives,” “he himself believed,” it says, “and his whole household.” If, then, he and his whole household believed because it was reported to him that his son was well, and he compared the hour of those who reported with the hour of him who foretold, he did not yet believe when he was asking. The Samaritans had waited for no sign; they had believed his word alone. But his fellow citizens deserved to hear, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe”; and yet there, though so great a miracle was done, none believed but he and his household. At his word alone many Samaritans believed; at that miracle only the household believed where it was done. What then, brothers, what is the Lord commending to us? Then Galilee of Judea was the Lord's country, because he was brought up there; but now, since that event foreshadowed something (for they are called prodigies only because they portend something: for a prodigy, prodigium, is so called as if porrodicium, because it says something ahead, signifies something ahead, and portends that something is to come), since, then, all those things portended something, all those things foretold something, let us now take as the country of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh (for he had no country on earth except according to the flesh, which he received on earth), let us take, then, as the Lord's country the people of the Jews. See, in his own country he has no honor. Now look at the crowds of the Jews; look at that nation now scattered over the whole world and torn up from its roots; look at the branches broken off, cut down, scattered, withered, through whose breaking off the wild olive deserved to be grafted in. See the crowd of the Jews: what does it say now? “He whom you worship, whom you adore, was our brother.” And let us answer, “A prophet has no honor in his own country.” In short, they saw the Lord Jesus walking on earth and doing miracles: giving light to the blind, opening the ears of the deaf, loosing the mouths of the dumb, bracing the limbs of the paralyzed, walking on the sea, commanding winds and waves, raising the dead; they saw him doing such great signs, and barely a few of them believed. I speak to the people of God: so many of us have believed; what signs have we seen? So what was done then foreshadowed what is happening now. The Jews were, or are, like the Galileans; we are like those Samaritans. We heard the Gospel, we assented to the Gospel, through the Gospel we believed in Christ; we have seen no signs, we demand none.

For although he was one of the twelve chosen and holy ones, yet he was an Israelite, that is, of the Lord's nation: that Thomas who wanted to put his fingers into the places of the wounds. The Lord rebuked him as he did this official. To this man he said, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe”; but to the other he said, “Because you have seen, you have believed.” He had come to the Galileans after the Samaritans who had believed his word, among whom he had done no miracles, whom, firm in faith, he had confidently left soon, because he had not left them in the presence of his divinity. So when the Lord said to Thomas, “Come, put out your hand, and do not be unbelieving, but believing,” and when he, having touched the places of the wounds, cried out and said, “My Lord and my God,” he is reproved, and it is said to him, “Because you have seen, you have believed.” Why, except that a prophet has no honor in his own country? But since among foreigners this prophet has honor, what follows? “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” We are the ones foretold; and what the Lord praised beforehand he has also deigned to fulfill in us. Those who crucified him saw him, they handled him, and even so few believed; we have not seen, we have not handled; we have heard, we have believed. May the blessedness he promised come about in us, be perfected in us: both here, because we have been preferred to his own country, and in the world to come, because we have been grafted in in place of the broken branches.

For he was showing that he would break off these branches and graft in this wild olive when he was moved by the faith of the centurion, who said to him, “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” Turning to those who were following him, he said, “Amen, I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel.” Why did he not find such faith in Israel? Because a prophet has no honor in his own country. Could not the Lord have said to that centurion too what he said to this official, “Go, your servant lives”? See the distinction: this official wanted the Lord to come down to his house; that centurion said he was unworthy. To the one it was said, “I will come and heal him”; to this one it was said, “Go, your son lives.” To the one he promised his presence; this one he healed by a word. Yet this one tried to extort his presence; the other said he was unworthy of his presence. Here, pride was yielded to; there, humility was granted. As though he said to this one: “Go, your son lives; do not weary me. Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe. You want my presence in your house; I can command even by a word. Do not you believe because of signs: a foreign centurion believed that I could do it by a word, and believed before I did it; you, unless you see signs and wonders, do not believe.” If so, then, let the proud branches be broken off, let the humble wild olive be grafted in; yet let the root remain, when those are cut off and these received. Where does the root remain? In the patriarchs. For the country of Christ is the people of Israel, because he came from them according to the flesh; but the root of this tree is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the holy patriarchs. And where are they? At rest with God, in great honor; so that that poor man, after leaving the body, was carried up into Abraham's bosom, and was seen from afar in Abraham's bosom by the proud rich man. So the root remains, the root is praised; but the proud branches deserved to be cut off and to wither; while the humble wild olive found a place by their cutting off.

Hear, then, how the natural branches are cut off and how the wild olive is grafted in, from that very centurion whom I thought worth mentioning for comparison with this official. “Amen,” he says, “I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel; therefore I say to you that many from east and west…” How widely the wild olive had occupied the earth! This world was a bitter forest; but because of humility, because of “I am not worthy that you should come under my roof,” “many from east and west will come.” And suppose they come: what will become of them? For if they come, they have already been cut from the forest: where are they to be grafted, lest they wither? “And they will recline,” he says, “with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.” At what banquet? Surely not one that invites, not to living forever, but to drinking much? “They will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.” Where? “In the kingdom,” he says, “of heaven.” And what will become of those who came from Abraham's stock? What will become of the branches with which the tree was full? What, except that they are cut off so that these may be grafted in? Show that they are cut off: “But the sons of the kingdom will go into the outer darkness.”

So let the Prophet have honor among us, because he did not have honor in his own country. He did not have honor in the country in which he was made; let him have honor in the country that he made. For in that country the maker of all things was made: he was made in it according to the form of a servant. For that very city in which he was made, Zion itself, the nation of the Jews itself, Jerusalem itself, he himself made when he was with the Father as the Word of God: “For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Of that man, then, of whom we heard today, “the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” the psalm too spoke beforehand, saying, “Mother Zion, a man will say.” A certain man, the mediator between God and men, the man, says “Mother Zion.” Why does he say “Mother Zion”? Because from there he received flesh; from there was the Virgin Mary, from whose womb the form of a servant was taken up, in which he deigned to appear most lowly. “Mother Zion,” says a man; and this man who says “Mother Zion” was made in her, was made man in her. For he was God before her, and he was made man in her. He who was made man in her himself founded her, the Most High, not the most lowly. He was made man in her, most lowly, because “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”; he himself founded her, the Most High, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through him.” Since, then, he founded this country, let him have honor here. The country in which he was born rejected him; let the country that he has born again receive him.