TEXTS
The woman says to him, “Lord, give me that water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw” (Jn 4:15). VII 40 This is already the second time the Samaritan woman has addressed Jesus as “Lord,” the first being when she said, “Lord, you do not have a water-jar and the well is deep” (Jn 4:11) and sought from where he had living water and if he were greater than Jacob, whom she supposed to be her father (see Jn 4:11–12), and then now when she also asks him for the water that will become in the one drinking it a spring leaping to eternal life. 41 And if “You would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10) is actually true, clearly, when she said, “Lord, give me that water,” she received the living water, so that she might no longer be baffled as someone thirsting nor come to Jacob’s well to draw, but, away from Jacob’s water, she might be able to contemplate the truth as the angels do and in a superhuman way. For the angels do not require Jacob’s well that they may drink, but each one has in himself a spring leaping to eternal life, a spring brought about and revealed by the Word himself and Wisdom herself. 42 But no one can receive another water, not given by the Word from Jacob’s spring, without taking great care because of thirst to go to there and draw. For this reason many things are lacking to the many who do not exert themselves very vigorously to draw from Jacob’s spring. He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered and said “I do not have a husband” (Jn 4:16–17). VIII 43 We have said above that the law is the soul’s ruler, so that, for each person submitted to it, the law is the soul’s husband. Now, as a testimony to this, we cite the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans who says: “Are you ignorant, brothers – for I speak to those under the law – that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives” (Rom. 7:1). But who “lives”? If we take “law” in its ordinary sense, it is the law. 44 He adds immediately: “So the married woman is bound to her husband as to a law,” as if he were saying, “To her living husband, and the husband is the law.” 45 Then again he says: “But if the husband should die, she is set free from the law of the husband” (Rom. 7:2), as if the woman were freed by the death of the law and no more accomplishes the duties of a wife to her husband. 46 Then he says: “Indeed, while he is living she is considered an adulteress if she should belong to another man, but if her husband 156