The Unnamed Samaritan Woman: Equal to the Apostles

Beloved in Christ,

Both last week’s Gospel, and this week’s, have additional people interacting with Christ whose conversations are recorded.

Nicodemus, last week, comes to Christ with a mountain of questions - and is left with the open grace of God to fill his life.

This week an unnamed Samaritan woman is asked by Christ to draw water, and he in turn tells her that he will give her the living water if only she asks.

Both encounters do not require anything of us, save for our willingness to come to God exactly as we are, and be open to the movements of the Holy Spirit to be changed.

This week, the unnamed Samaritan woman asks - and is changed. She goes on to invite the whole town to meet Jesus, the Messiah, and many Samaritans believe in Jesus.

This woman becomes profoundly important to the development of Christian history. She is, in the early centuries of Christianity, given the name Photini which means “the luminous one,” “the enlightened one,” “the light bearer.”

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, she is given the epithet of “Equal to the Apostles” and her hagiography recounts that she continued evangelizing the Samaritan countryside, bringing many people to Christ, and is ultimately tortured and martyred in the reign of Emperor Nero.

By the early 3rd and 4th centuries, people refer to her as an Apostle in sermons and treatises.

Photini’s discourse with Christ is also the longest recorded discourse in all the Gospels.

This woman - this unnamed Samaritan woman encounters Christ, asks for Jesus’s living water, and is transformed into someone referred to as “Equal to the Apostles.”

She is a magnificent example of faith and response to God’s call in our life. She demonstrates for us what encountering Christ, and responding to that encounter, can do in our lives.

And she challenges us: How are we encountering Christ in our day-to-day? Do we recognize these encounters? And if we do, how do we respond?

May Saint Photini, the now-named Samaritan woman, Equal to the Apostles, and Evangelist, pray for us to the Lord our God!

Yours in Christ,

Alex+