The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. John
Ver. 32. — But He said , &c. “I am hungering for the conversion of the Samaritans, which I am procuring through the woman. So that spiritual hunger diminishes and keeps down, if it does not take away, all hunger for bodily food : meanwhile you who are tired and famished, eat as much as you please.” “ More obscurely He intimates,” says S. Cyril, “that if the disciples knew of the conversion of the Samaritans, which was then going on, they would be thinking of that food, rather than be taking thought for corporal food. For since they were to be the future Teachers of the world, He teaches them by His own example that they ought to have far more care for the salvation of men than for their own bodies.”
Ver. 33 . — Then said His disciples , &c. The Apostles did not understand that Christ was speaking of spiritual food. Wherefore S. Augustine says, “What wonder was it if the woman did not understand about the water? behold, the disciples do not understand the food.”
Ver. 34 .—Jesus saith, &c. Christ here calls the work of preaching, and man’s redemption, His, that is, His own special and sweetest food, because by it, as by the greatest dainties, He was fed and delighted. So Euthymius says, “ The will of the Father, who had sent Him, and His work enjoined upon Christ, is the salvation of men, according to the words, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do .”
Tropologically, let Christians, and specially preachers, learn from Christ that their spiritual food ought to be obedience and zeal for souls. 1. Because both sustain the life of the soul. 2. Because both, like food, cause the powers of the mind to become strong. 3. Because as food causes a child to grow up to be a perfect man, so do these two virtues make us to grow to a virile state of spiritual strength.
Ver. 35. — Say not ye, &c. From the metaphor of food He passes to the allegorical harvest, from which are food and bread.
Say not ye. That is, ye are wont often to say. From this it would appear that the Apostles, as they passed through the cornfields of the Sichemites, talked among themselves about the coming harvest, as men are wont to do. From hence Christ took occasion to speak about the spiritual harvest, i.e., the conversion of the Samaritans. As though He had said, “The care of the natural harvest interests you : but the care of the spiritual harvest ought to concern you far more, that you should help Me in converting the Samaritans.”
Yet four months . Maldonatus thinks this was a proverb, meaning that there was time enough for thinking about any matter — as the natural harvest, for instance: but that it could not be used of the spiritual harvest; for that indeed was already ripe for being reaped by the Apostles. For Maldonatus thinks this was spoken by Christ about the end of March, when the harvest is not far off.
S. Augustine and others take the words as they stand, literally. Wherefore these words would seem to have been spoken by Christ in the month of January, after the eight months in which He had preached in Judea. For in four months from January, or in May, the crops are ripe, and the harvest comes. Wherefore at Pentecost, which fell in May, they offered to God the loaves of the first fruits of the new harvest. “Ye,” says S. Augustine, “are counting four months unto harvest. I show you another harvest, white and prepared already.” So He says, Lift up your eyes , and look unto the fields that they are white already unto the harvest. The white fields He calls the city of Sichem, and the places round about, which, stirred up by the woman, bring hearers in troops to Christ. As though He had said, “ Ye see these fields, filled not with wheat, but with a multitude of people flocking to Me, who are prepared to receive My doctrine, and to be admitted into My Church. Labour then strenuously with Me, O My Apostles, to reap the harvest. The wheat harvest may be four months distant yet : but the harvest of souls is nigh, yea ready, amongst these Samaritans. It is fitting then that you and I should reap them, and gather them into the garner of God.” Theophylact says, “ Lift up both your bodily and your spiritual eyes, and see the multitude of the Samaritans. See their minds eager to believe, which, like fields that are ripe for salvation, have need of reapers.”
Ver. 36. — And he that reapeth , &c. Christ invites the Apostles to labour with Him in gathering in this harvest, by the hope of an eternal reward. As though He said, “ He that reaps wheat receives wages, but only brief and temporal : but he that reaps with Me this spiritual harvest of souls gathers it unto life eternal. For this harvest the reaper gains both for himself and for his crop, that is, for the souls whom he converts, for he leads them to heaven as it were in triumph.” “ The fruit of this terrestrial harvest,” says S. Chrysostom, “does not arrive at eternal life, but that spiritual harvest always accompanies us.” Christ calls Moses and the Prophets sowers , who with great labour delivered the seeds of faith to the Jews, i.e., such first principles as that God is One, and that the Messiah would come for the salvation of the world. The reapers are Christ and His Apostles, who, by the teaching of the Gospel, perfected these first principles of the Prophets, and by the faith and grace of Christ sanctified both Jews and Samaritans, and led them to eternal life. Wherefore this conversion of the Samaritans brought joy, not only to Christ and the Apostles, but to Moses and the Prophets, because their seed had not proved unfruitful, but had been brought by Christ to an abundant harvest. As S. Augustine says, “ If the Prophets had not been sowers, whence had it come to that woman to say, I know that Messiah cometh? That woman was already ripe fruit.” And again, “They had different labours in time, but they shall have an equal fruition of joy, when they together receive the wages of everlasting life.” It is often very different in the natural harvest, where the reaper rejoices, but the sower sorrows.
Ver. 37. — For in this, &c. A word, i.e., a proverb , which is “ current in the mouths of many,” says S. Chrysostom. This proverb , one soweth, &c., which is spoken of the natural harvest, is still more true with regard to the spiritual sowers and reapers. “ The sowers were the Prophets, the reapers are you, O ye Apostles, who by My doctrine will bring to perfection the seeds of faith which were sown by the Prophets, and will gather them, when ripe, into the storehouse of the Church.” Wherefore He subjoins an explanation.
Ver. 38. — I have sent, &c. I have sent, i.e., I have desired and determined to send. An inchoate and destined, not a completed, action is signified. The Prophets, and teachers of the Law, and such as they, with great toil taught the uninstructed minds of the Jews the rudiments of the knowledge of God, and prepared them for the Christian harvest of righteousness and holiness. You, O ye Apostles, have entered into their labours , because ye shall convert the minds of the Jews prepared to receive Me.
Moreover Christ said this, that by the example of the Prophets, who sowed so laboriously, He might animate the Apostles to preach the gospel, which was more easy, and involved less toil. “Lest,” as S. Chrysostom says, “they should be troubled as about to undergo the greatest burden, when they were sent to preach. They must think that the Prophets had had yet harder labour, even as sowing the seed is harder labour, and needs greater anxiety than reaping. As the Gloss says, “ Unless the Jews had been prepared by the Prophets, they would not have listened to the Apostles.”
Ver. 39. — Of that city many believed , &c. They were moved because she confessed before her fellow-citizens that she had lived in fornication with a man not her husband, as Christ had told her, that by means of her own shame she might make known the honour and glory of Christ, the true Prophet and Messiah.
Ver. 40. — He abode there two days: not longer, lest, if He abode longer among Samaritans, the Jews should calumniate Him, as not being the Messiah, who was promised to the Jews, rather than to the Samaritans.
Ver. 42. — And said to the woman, &c. Saviour of the world, understand Messiah, as the Syriac Version adds, who was sent by God for the salvation not of Israel only, as the Jews pretended, but of all the nations of the whole world. Of the world I say, lost by sin. Deservedly does S. Chrysostom in this place admire the, as it were, sudden faith of the Samaritans, when the Jews were so dilatory and hard to believe in Christ.
Ver. 43. — After two days, &c. That is, He went into other cities and villages of Galilee, leaving out Nazareth, His own city, as S. Matthew says (iv. 13).