Winter is the dry season on the Florida peninsula, with abundant sunshine and also the threat of drought and wildfires. Last Sunday, though, was one of those days when it seemed as if the whole world was running with water.
On the way to church, we held our umbrellas close as we sloshed through puddles and peered through the downpour. We wouldn’t have been surprised to see an ark under construction. Everything was saturated, dripping, sodden, or swimming, and at times it seemed as if we were viewing buildings and cars and each other from under the sea.
After Mass began, we listened to the Sunday readings. The first reading and the Gospel were:
· Exodus 17, where the people were thirsting, and God told Moses, “Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.”
· John 4, where Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’
you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
And…
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Water everywhere!
And we sang:
· “Crashing Waters at Creation” (Sylvia Dunstan)
· “Come to the Feast,” with the words, “Ho, ev’ryone who thirsts: Come to the waters!” (Marty Haugen, © 1991, GIA Publications, Inc.)
· “O Healing River”: “O healing river, send down your waters…” (Fran Minkoff)
The church seemed to be awash. At the end of the celebration, we rose from our pews and slogged back to the car.
God is never stingy with the living water. Even when our hearts feel barren and dusty, the water is there for the asking. When we ask and still feel dry, the living water is with us nevertheless, permeating the truest, deepest part of ourselves, nurturing us, filling us, nourishing us, and bringing forth life — sometimes in spite of ourselves. Like the unborn child in its mother’s womb, we are surrounded by the waters of God. It is so much our element that we may not even notice that we float in it.
O God, may I never try to shut myself off from your living water. Grant me the grace to know the gift of God and to receive with joyful heart your “spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Amen.