Met Silouan (Muci)'s Condolance Letter to Patriarch John X

 Arabic original here.

 

Brumana, June 23, 2025

His Beatitude the Honorable Patriarch John X,

Their Eminences the Honorable Metropolitans and Bishops in our Antiochian Church,

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

On behalf of myself, of my predecessor His Eminence Metropolitan Georges (Khodr), and of the clergy and members of the archdiocese, I offer condolences to our father and Patriarch John X for the martyrs of the Church of Saint Elias, Dweilaa (Damascus), who offered themselves as a sacrifice with the bloodless sacrifice in which they came to partake. The One who offers it joined with them, unbeknownst to those who intended to harm, terrorize and intimidate.

In this way, the Conqueror of death shared with us His victory over every form of death that surrounds us, which seeks to catch us in its clutches to kill within us all our faith in Him before rending our bodies on altars other than the one He chose for our sanctification.

The affliction is painful, no doubt. But the consolation of the Holy Lamb is even greater because He was pleased to bear us in it and endure it, as at the time of His salvific Passion, to repel its deadly poison from us and to give us life by His grace, which can raise us up in this affliction as ones faithful to Him in bearing it and remaining steadfast in it. Our souls are consoled by the faith of our steadfast families, their zealous children and their dedicated pastors. They are the crown of our Church placed upon her wounds on accoutn of her faith in Christ.

As I greet your fatherhood and brotherhood in Christ, and am consoled by your patience, I join my prayer to your prayer so that the crown of glory may be added to the martyrs of our Church, that the hearts of their families may be comforted, and that those afflicted may find wellness and healing, recalling the words of the Good Shepherd, who redeems our sins and transgressions by His precious blood, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

May the Lord shower upon all His grace, by which He honored the saints of our Antiochian Church who welcomed their brothers yesterday in the heavenly mansions, on the day we celebrate their common feast.

Asking for your prayers,

+Silouan

Metropolitan of Jbeil, Batroun and their Dependencies (Mount Lebanon)

 

Met Silouan (Muci)'s Christmas Message 2019

Source.

The Church-Manger: The Visitation of God and the Visitation of Man

"She (Mary) gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them"
(Luke 2: 7)

Warmth, light, and presence radiate even beyond the manger of Bethlehem. The Guest of the manger makes warmer our ties with His love, illuminates our lives with His grace, and strengthens our determination through His presence. Jesus soothes our hearts because He is with us, gives meaning to our hope, and mobilizes our souls towards faith, love, and solidarity.

 

The first days of the Guest in the manger of Bethlehem brought together all aspects of the human condition stuck in loneliness, poverty, violence, shortage and isolation. This atmosphere was illuminated by the presence and animated by the spirit of Mary and Joseph, servants of a mystery which is slowly revealed; by the appearance of angels who praise Him whom they worship in heaven; by the wonderful presence of the shepherds; and by the prostration of the magi, the first fruits of a fervent adoration that humanity offers to the Lord. In this way were formed the beginnings of a gospel, which the angels, followed by the first witnesses of the Child born in a manger, began to announce.

 

Today, our churches are a manger in the center of the world. Among us are Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the magi, and with them the new-born who comes from Above, surrounded by earthly angels who praise him. Our churches are established in countries that experience different, difficult and painful troubles to varying degrees. Each of us strives to serve in a manner that we would not lose sight of the star which leads us to Bethlehem, that our parishes might become the manger that receives the Lord, and that our witness brings forth the good news of God to man, in all its strength, vitality, realism, authenticity and efficiency.

 

Although the human being suffers today, there are, however, brilliant witnesses which are born from a conscience, an understanding and a sensitivity, which are the result of the suffering and the determination to overcome weakness, laxity, corruption and fragmentation, and which carry the seeds of solidarity, faith in the truth, kindness and unity. They await the dawn of Him who is their source, their inspiration and their benefactor.

 

I put all my hope that the suffering experienced today becomes a manger, in which we see the birth of the Redeemer in the hearts of those who need Him (and we all need Him), and that it is also an opportunity for us to be His witnesses in love, service and adoration. How much I yearn that the present suffering be a starting point for joy to be revealed because of this double visitation: the visitation of the Lord to us and our visitation to our neighbour!

 

In the approaching feast, I cannot help but thank the Lord for all these manifestations of solidarity and determination that were expressed by the faithful of the parishes and monasteries of our archdiocese in order to relieve the pain of those who suffer more, thanks to their spiritual, moral, fraternal and material visitation towards their neighbour. I also thank the Lord for the constructive dialogue that many of our young people and our elders opened during this gestation that we are living in Lebanon. In fact, they favoured, within the family and the parish, true love over differences in public affairs which led to nervous and sometimes violent attitudes. They also showed a positive response to the call of our Church to initiate a fruitful dialogue and to encourage a campaign of solidarity in favour of the most suffering, during this last period, a space where the clergy and the parishioners were involved, in which there were many young people, families and secular commissions. I firmly believe that, in this way, we have taken a step together to strengthen the culture of dialogue and solidarity in order to embody divine visitation in human visitation and commit ourselves to serve our brethren and their needs. Thus we live our Christian faith and our authentic humanity, and we consolidate the pillars of our country on the basis of "the Church-manger", the place of God meeting with man, the place of dialogue with Him, of worship to Him, and union with Him.

 

I join in my prayers to those of my predecessor, His Eminence the Metropolitan Georges (Khodr), who does not cease to pray with his heart immersed in the depth of suffering and the depth of God's mercy as well; I also join them to those of the pastors of our parishes and monasteries, to the monastics and rational sheep of the Holy flock of Christ, in pursuit of the good of our Church, of our country and of the whole world.

 

+ Silouan
Metropolitan of Byblos, Botrys and Dependencies
(Mount Lebanon)

 

Met Silouan (Muci): Our Local Church and Holiness

Arabic original here.

Our Local Church and Our Holiness

The Sundays of the Gospel according to St Matthew start with the Lord's inviting the disciples to follow Him, to preach the good news of the kingdom, to pastor His flock, to heal man and invite him to return to God the Father. In short, He invited them to the holiness in which He exists and to bring their brethren to also enjoy it themselves. If a letter is read from its title and the sowing is known from its fruits, then this is indeed what we have celebrated and openly declared on the Feast of All Saints, on the Sunday that follows our celebration of Pentecost.

We know in our ecclesiastical practice that on the Sunday that follows the Sunday of All Saints some local churches commemorate their own saints, as is the case, for example, in the Russian Church, which commemorates the saints who have shone forth within her, or the Holy Mountain of Athos, which celebrates all those who have practiced asceticism in its monasteries and caves or who have been martyred, or the Diocese of Thessalonica, which celebrates its saints who number more than a hundred.

Starting off from this lived reality in various places in our Orthodox Church, perhaps we can draw on this tradition to celebrate on this day our Antiochian saints, known and unknown. By this we do not desire to boast, but rather the motivation is to lift up thanks to God for the seeds of holiness that have sprouted over the course of history, ancient and contemporary, in our land and among the faithful of our church, perhaps as a local model to inspire believers, give joy to their hearts, and sharpen their interest and desire to live in faith and bear witness to Christ where they live, learn, serve and die. Perhaps the attraction of the existence of local saints will make the good news more incarnate in their life, so that we may be joyfully aware that Christ has found for Himself in our environment, our culture and our educational, social, political, economic and material circumstances in their various forms, a place within us where He can dwell in this century, last century and the centuries that preceded them.

Such a commemoration would help us to take responsibility for living in faith more seriously, especially when we put it in the context that the Lord announced to His disciples that the apostles would sit on the thrones of the twelve tribes of Israel and judge the world (Matthew 19:28). Some fathers explained the meaning of this verse by saying that the saints in every generation, because they persevered in the faith and sanctified themselves, will judge their contemporaries in their generation, so that no one will have an excuse for his failure to strive to sanctify himself when another was able to sanctify his life in the very same circumstances.

Our land has received the seeds of the good news of the Gospel and it has suffered much to spread it and make it firm in other lands, since the age of the apostles. That which our predecessors and ancestors received freely, they gave freely (cf. Matthew 10:8) to subsequent generations. That which the Holy Spirit taught them by explaining the divine word, guiding their souls to knowledge of the truth, self-sacrificial service to one's neighbor and orthodox worship, we have received from them, we strive to crystalize it and make incarnate it in our life and we raise our children in it.

One is greatly affected when he sees a handful of believers, small or large, living their Christian faith as a constant and natural choice, in the simplicity of the experience that love, joy and thankfulness must not be absent from the believer in adversities, sicknesses and hardships. Having this perspective allows you to receive the spirit of wisdom, gentleness, peace, love, calm, consultation and communion, and your soul will be lifted from its fall and freed from its chains. You will find a beacon that illuminates your path, and you will find salt that gives flavor to your life. You will discover this especially in unusual circumstances, such as wrenching poverty, displacement and forced emigration, temporary sicknesses, the early loss of children, patience with straying children, etc. With their constant prayer of the heart, these ones still inspire the spirit of holiness among us and in us. We favor these living, hidden soldiers in our church, in our growth, in addition to others among our teachers and fathers in virtue, prayer and service. All of them have our great thanks on this day and we ask that the Lord sanctify them and sanctify us in them.

Met Silouan (Muci): Holiness

Arabic original here.

Holiness

The believer's holiness is the fruit, expression and reflection of the incarnation of the Son of God. He became like us so that we may become like Him. Taking inspiration from His example, as well as from the model of the saints, whose synaxis we commemorate on the Sunday of All the Saints, we can get a realistic image of holiness. Here is some of what holiness means with regard to ethical behavior in its various forms:

That you hear and listen. This means that you empty yourself so that you may be ready to listen to the other. That you take him seriously. That you respect and honor him according to his worth, that is, to the degree that Christ honors him. In the same context, it means that you learn to listen to God who speaks to us through various means in order to reveal to us His will and His love.

That you speak such that your words become a reflection of your building up the edifice that God desires to be His dwelling-place, an edifice not made by hands, whereas the human person is a repository and vessel for the Holy Spirit. That when you address the other, you feel that you are addressing God on his behalf or addressing them on God’s behalf, so you place bonds of love and God's will as the framework within which your desires and your will move. Prayer and addressing others has a single final purpose, which is to sanctify souls, to strengthen harmony and to persist in faith in the incarnate Son and the Father who sent Him.

That you work so as to assume part of the responsibility for the site of the service or commitment that you have taken upon yourself or that events or circumstances have imposed on you, such that you strive for your work to be compatible with God's will and an expression of love for God and your neighbor.

That you behave and act such that your words and deeds are a translation of your faith, without separation between word and deed. That is, without hypocrisy. Believing in Christ means that I believe in Christ the chaste, in Christ the servant, in Christ the humble, etc. This is what calls me to practice chastity, to serve and to be humble as the Lord has given us a model in Himself.

That you love such that you give yourself, so you weep with those who are weeping and rejoice with those who are rejoicing, and you give yourself to God and to your neighbor according to the divine commandment. This love is accompanied by suffering because you are not perfect and neither are others, because you are weak and selfish and do not realize God's will. The goal of holiness is striving for love.

These elements crystalize one's spirit according to God's Spirit, which touches us and through us touches all existence, in order to sanctify it, guide it and lead it to wellsprings of life. This Spirit listens to the groaning of all existent things: rational, living and inanimate. He is the one who speaks and grants wisdom, understanding and discernment. He is the one who does the Father's will among humankind, guides them to what Christ commanded and leads humanity to the day when the Son will come again in the glory of His Father. He is the one who consoles the believer in the labor pains that strike when giving birth to the new man within him and giving birth to the signposts of the kingdom among us, where there is justice, love, peace and meekness. It is the Spirit of God that we emulate every day of our life. When He settles within us, we can palpably feel God's holiness in everything.

Is holiness possible today? Yes, if we commit to learning humility and meekness, as Jesus asked us to do: "Learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29). Let us not be afraid to seek this rest that comes by bearing the cross of commitment. That is, struggle, toil, self-restraint and setting forth at every moment, even from rock bottom, for the Lord repays everyone with divine justice and mercy.

Met Silouan (Muci): The Dispensation in the Holy Spirit

Arabic original here.

The Dispensation in the Holy Spirit

The dispensation that God inaugurated at Pentecost through the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples was greater than the dispensation inaugurated by the incarnate Son that was revealed to us particularly in His public preaching. Jesus began His preaching with this call: "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand" (Matthew 3:2), and concluded His dispensation on earth by remaining with His disciples for forty days "speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). He began and closed His public preaching by inaugurating the kingdom of His Father and inviting us to it. He told us everything He heard from the Father and did in front of us everything He saw the Father do. He explained His will to us through commandments and parables, and He gave us the true life that is from Him, His life being our life.

In the dispensation that began at Pentecost, which completes the one that preceded it, the members of the body of Christ came to perform "greater" works than those that the incarnate Son performed (cf. John 14:12). Moreover, He has made a bond of kinship between us by letting us bear each other's burdens, and to offer our entire life to Christ, so that it may come to be "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). He has granted us understanding so that we may penetrate into the meaning of the commandments and the way to abide by them. He has showered us with divine gifts with which we trace the will of the Heavenly Father on earth and build His kingdom within us. He united us and called us to preserve our unity in the bonds of peace and love. He has ordered us to give grace freely and to be His collaborators in bringing the entire human race to knowledge of the true God and the one He sent, Jesus Christ. He taught us how to lift prayer up to God and to stand in His presence. He has asked us to give Him the old man with his suffering, weaknesses, lusts and sins so that we may receive from Him the new man, new leaven that is good for leavening the dough of the very ill humankind. 

The Church has realized that man in general is very ill and totally away from God, the source of existence, life and perfection. Thus it seems that this dispensation in the Holy Spirit is a sort of swimming against the current, because in it the believer confronts himself and confronts the evil, sin and death that have taken root in him and around him, just as he also confronts the evil one. But God desired to console us in the struggle and the effort by giving us someone to guide us on the path, to revive us when we fall, to inspire us in adversities, to teach us what to say and what to do, and to renew life within us, if we take refuge in Him with trust and humility. He has given us His Spirit, in addition to His body, so that we may be nourished from Him and nourish others with Him. Consequently, we will not be separated from Him, but rather be united with Him.

Thus, the second dispensation in the Holy Spirit acts in a similar way to the first dispensation in the incarnate Son. That is, in humility, concealment, and surpassing love. We have known the activity of the Holy Spirit in the souls of the saints in which He came to dwell, and they have given us a model for the signposts of this living kingdom that God the Father has prepared for those who believe in His dispensation in His Son Jesus and by the work of His Holy Spirit.

How beautiful is this prayer that the Church has placed on the lips of the hierarch as he blesses the faithful with the dikirion and trikirion during the Trisagion Hymn in the Divine Liturgy. In fact, he says in the first part, "O Jesus, grant Your servants swift and firm consolation when their spirits are weary. Do not depart from our minds in sorrows or from our souls in hardships, but rather always set us aright," while he says in the second part, "Come near to us, come near, O You who are in every place. As You have always been with Your apostles, so too unite Yourself with those who long for You, O merciful one, so that being united with You, we may glorify and praise Your All-Holy Spirit."

May we praise and glorify Him with our lips, our hearts and our daily life and seek Him at every moment. Nothing is sweeter than His presence within us, even though we are unworthy of Him. There is not enough time for us to thank God for the Spirit's work in us for our salvation and the salvation of the world. If only we could take advantage of time and have the ability to turn our time and our life into a factory that produces goodness, in the Spirit, for everyone who passes through our life, so that the Spirit may catch them and provide knowledge of God, whole-hearted faith in Him and service to Him, just as we serve Him and, indeed, better than we do.

Met Silouan (Muci): This is My Father and Your Father

Arabic original here.

This is My Father and Your Father

In the Son's ascending to heaven and awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit, there is no better opportunity to talk about the Father than the Sunday that falls between the Thursday of Ascension and Pentecost Sunday. The text of the Gospel of the Sunday of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod was surprising, since in it the Son speaks about the Father, His Father. Is there anyone who can do this better than Him? Is there anyone else to tell us about the Father, to present Him to us as God and as Father, and to give us a living model of the unity that exists between Them and of the love that flows out upon us from this relationship?

In fact, Jesus started off on the basis of a definition that He alone can authoritatively express and He transmits it to us in the certainty of salvation that lies in the truth that He declares to us and through us, to the entire world: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You [i.e., the Father], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). He brings you, in simplicity, to the bosom of the One to whom He speaks and He places you in a single rank with His first disciples, just as when we heard the Lord tell Mary Magdalene on the morning of that Paschal Day, “I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God” (John 20:17). He places us on a single course with those who expressed this experience of theirs by using the expression “the God of our fathers.”

The Lord brings you into the mystical bedchamber where He abides, and He wants us to abide there with Him, like Him, without fear or shortcoming. At that point, you discover that our faith is not based on human “creativeness”, a "religion" like the others, but rather you find yourself before the Son of God speaking to His Father, the Father, introducing you to Him, bringing you to Him, and offering Him to you. Moreover, you become a witness to the relationship that exists between Them. In this perspective, this revelation becomes the content of your faith, your possession (your own), a certainty that you bear, a faith by which you live, a faith that you express, as it is written in our Bible: the experience of “the Kingdom of Heaven” or the experience of “eternal life”. God becomes your God and the Father, your Father, such that we can turn in prayer toward the One about whom Jesus spoke as He taught us, “Our Father who art in heaven...” (Matthew 6:9).

It is only possible to live out this truth if you believe in it and if you offer yourself to Him, in freedom and humility. It doesn't matter if you are broken or you believe that you are wronged, unlucky, complicated, heavy-laden with life's burdens or immersed in sins. Keep in mind: You have one God and Father. You know Him through His Son who told us about Him, gave us Him and placed us before Him. Indeed, we can say more about this: He showed us Him, since He made us witnesses of the relationship between Them, and He did not deprive us from this “intimacy” that exists between Them becoming our irrevocable share, by grace, just as it is His own share. It is the same share for you, if you believe, if you listen, if you repent, if you come to Him.

And so we experience a great adventure, an adventure that touches the hell of estrangement (from God and from our Heavenly Father), as well as it leads you to the heights of the heaven of divine love and adoption. In this effort, your sonship to Him comes into being within you and you experience His fatherhood to you, as a good God (according to the divine and not human standards of goodness), so you receive from His Spirit in order to give Him. At that point, you can truly bear witness to God. We have in this a rule established by the Lord: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). 

How great is our share if we know the Father through the Son, if we keep His name, if we do His commandments, if we come to Him and help others to come to Him! How hard is it for us to do this, to remain in Him according to His Spirit, to not substitute Him for someone or something else! Jesus taught Martha through her sister Mary when He said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). May we stand firm in Him if we are standing right, or return to Him if we are broken, so we may be together, as one, as a fulfilment of the Lord's act of praying for us: “Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are” (John 17:11).

Met Silouan (Muci): Bearing Witness to God's Work in Us

Arabic original here.

In the Line of Christ and Bearing Witness to God's Work in Us

The event of the healing of the man blind from birth introduces you into the core of God's work in the world. Here the Lord introduces you into the core of this work when He unveiled to His disciples the state of the man born blind, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him" (John 9:3). Here He is offering us a new approach for dealing with our life and everything in it from the perspective of God's work, which makes us take the attitude of a partner in the glorious works that God has prepared for us and of witnesses to them after having, individually and collectively, passed through the stage of blindness where God's vision, His works and the glory that lies within them are hidden from us as behind a veil.

In this perspective, Christ introduces us into the mystery hidden in this approach. Here he openly says to His disciples: “I must work the works of Him who sent Me” (John 9:4). With these words, He placed His disciples, just as He places us today, in a state of encounter, listening, preparation and longing to seek to gain knowledge of God's will and to work to incarnate it in our life. When the Lord declares “I must”, He takes you out of your situation in all its importance and out of your manner of analyzing it and approaching it, and brings you to a new approach based on the perspective of how God sees us and our life and His presence in the world and His work in it.

One cannot read without there being light. After Christ set to work doing the will of His Father, with His actions a genuine expression of this will, He did not leave us alone and in darkness. By saying, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5), He gave us the light necessary for approaching our life from now on. For us to make Him present, so that the world may continue to have light, the light of Christ's presence and grace, this means that we tie every activity that we undertake to the remembrance of God before we embark on it, as we carry it out, and after we complete it. If we do this, we put ourselves in the line of Christ, who declared to His disciples that He does the works of the One who sent Him, and that we believe that He is the light of the world in the world. In this we reflect that we are eager to seek knowledge of God's will in our life and that we believe that realizing this will is light for us and for the world.

We are surprised in the text of the Gospel by how the man born blind interacted with Jesus. Jesus' asking him, after “they had cast him out,” whether he believed in the Son of God (John 9:35) was met with a practical response from the blind man himself, earlier, at the beginning of his encounter with Christ. In fact, when Christ tested him by increasing his blindness, when he daubed his eyes with clay (that is, making even more impossible his ability to see) and asked him to wash them in the pool, this blind man did not hesitate to put himself in the line of Christ: “So he went and washed, and came back seeing” (John 9:7). We are surprised none nor nothing could separate him from Christ: neither bitter experience since his birth, nor what appeared to him to be the last "trial" in His placing the clay on his eyes, nor even what followed in his parents' and the Pharisees' attitude toward the miracle. And so God's works were revealed in the blind man. He placed himself in the line of Christ and bore witness to Him, before bowing down in worship to Him, in a circular motion that starts from God and is carried out on account of Him, before returning to Him once more through worship and thanksgiving.

Perhaps now you receive a share like the share of the blind man, in case you don't see. In fact, the Lord still does the works of His Father so that the world may see God's works and He has chosen you so that God's works may be revealed in you. Do you not see that? If your answer is affirmative, then do what He tells you; and if your answer is negative, then seek light from Him, since, in both cases, you are in Christ's sights, so that you may in turn see, believe, and bear witness to God's works. At the end, may we sing together, “O Lord, how great are your works! In wisdom have you made them all” (Psalm 103:24).

Met Silouan (Muci): The Good Leaven from Outside the Supposed Goodness

Arabic original here. 

The Good Leaven from Outside the Supposed Goodness

The believer never stops drawing near the Resurrection until the Resurrection itself snatches him from the way he is approaching it. Furthermore, it drives him towards its true approach to man, whoever he may be, under the light of the dispensation that Christ inaugurated amidst our sinfulness which is still deeply rooted within us. There is no more obvious example than what happened before the eyes of the Apostles themselves when they came across Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman and there are no more effective words, until our present day, than those uttered then by Christ unto them!

None of the Evangelists records any conversation of Christ longer than the one that brought Him together with the Samaritan woman. It seems "it was necessary" for Christ to pass through Samaria, where there was Jacob's Well in Sychar. It is a sort of necessity for which we find no need at all because nothing can-- or rather, nothing must-- happen there. Such an encounter was, in fact, the fruit of fervent prayer or a desire extended and poured out in service to the salvific divine dispensation for the sake of "that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). That verse does not apply to us (because we think that we are not one of those), but rather to the Samaritan woman because the Gospel must be "useful" for someone, especially "this" sort of person (that is, those to whom can apply our standards in classifying those whom we consider that are lost).

Jesus found in the Samaritan woman the good leaven in order to tell us about those who are worthy of resurrection and how their resurrection comes about. She is a leaven that transformed from the old man to the new man, a leaven that leavened the dough of all Samaria through the testimony of her confessing what she did-- not for cheap publicity for herself, but in order to present the person who revealed her deeds to her without any human foreknowledge and who raised her up from them. Her joy at the One who loved her inundated her and she, in turn, poured Him out upon those who had not hesitated to roll their eyes at her immoral life, forcing her to go out to the well at midday in order to fulfil her need for water.

The rising of the Samaritan woman to the light of Christ has as a consequence the rising of the Samaritans to the very same light. You find yourself before a rolling snowball that grows bigger the more it rolls downhill-- that is, the more the Samaritan woman humbled herself before her folk. A small hope was transformed into a great hope: a living, experienced, accepted and transmitted hope. It is a hope that is remarkably contagious, to the point that we wonder today why we are not feeling the same thing. Perhaps we have gotten used to the Feast of the Resurrection to such a degree that we have become emptied of it without being aware. We give thanks to God as we notice that today there are many who are still echoing that great hope that has shaken Samaria, the one which was eagerly cried out by those Samaritans converted to Christ: "Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world" (John 4:42).

You are surprised, amidst this overwhelming joy the one that you notice in Christ's heart as well as in the heart of the Samaritan woman and her Samaritan folk, by what the apostles themselves (and we too) were immersed in and concerned of. Perhaps they were right, (and we too, like them), when their minds were on a matter other than what was on Christ's mind and heart and was the core of His mission, so they said to Him, "Master, eat" (John 4:31). The Master could not but teach them: "I have food to eat of which you do not know... My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work" (John 4: 32, 34). By uttering these words, the Master generates in you a sort of "shame" that strips you of your cares (while at the same time He discloses them) and that purify you by replacing them with your love for and willingness to do the will of His Father. In that way, He make you worthy of becoming His dinner guest at His table, eating the same food He showed to His disciples.

Then you rejoice wholeheartedly when you notice that the Teacher is constantly saving us from our comprehension of the resurrection and discipleship that are keeping us, indeed, distant from Him. Instead, He reveals to us the true meaning of the resurrection and discipleship, thus introducing us into His purpose for the salvation of mankind. Your joy is increased when you realize that He is able to find good leaven from outside what we supposed to be goodness, i.e. from outside the standards that we set for goodness and by which we judge others. In this context, the Resurrection becomes a natural gift that can be the “good part” of our brothers and brethren in any place we are settled. How great is the favor of this Samaritan woman, in that the disciples ate of the Teacher's true food, as it has been the same for us, after them! In fact, she was a good leaven, from nowhere and without we be aware of! How great was her favor, because she put the Resurrection within reach of those who are near and those who are far, as both of them are within the scope of the hope that the Resurrection has sown within us for all time!