Spirituality of the Readings
Cravings
The readings for Sunday speak of a key desire within us, a longing, a craving. The best symbol for this desire is the thirst for water.
I remember bicycling with a friend out in the countryside on a very hot day. We had not counted on one particular hill that would rise up and up before us, a very long and unremitting one. We worked and worked and worked and at last achieved the top. Hurray! But the heat and humidity had perspired the water out of us we were thirsty. I felt like a paper copy of myself. We debated what to do. There was a farmhouse or residence of some kind just off to the left. Why not go ask for a drink of water?
Because the house itself was at the top of another hill, and there were possibly four hundred steps leading up to it. Ok not four hundred, but it seemed like that to us. Could we possibly put ourselves through still another Olympic ordeal and clamber up the steep steps just in order to subject some innocent citizen to our begging?
Yes indeed. We marched up, knocked on the door, were greeted by a most gracious lady who could think of nothing more delightful than to bring us each a big glass of cool, wet water. Aaaaahhhhhh. Drink it to the bottom. Thanks. Easy trip down the steps. Off and away.
You can fast from food for but not from water. In the Gospel Jesus uses a water as a symbol to the Samaritan woman about slaking her thirst forever, about putting a flowing fountain of water right inside her. He is talking about the longing each of us has deep within for “the love poured forth from God in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.” That is the way Paul puts it in the second reading. This need of ours is much like thirst except that it is more subtle. We use many other substitutes to fill it. Food, work, looks, accomplishment, alcohol, other persons, sexual satisfaction, and so on. They do not work. They leave us croaking the famous line "Is that all there is?"
It is not. We are constructed in such a way that without real love we die. St. Ignatius points to this fact again and again. Our small selves are constructed with a soul that can open wide enough to admit even the very presence of God himself. And God is able to become whatever size will fit us. Tagore, a non-Christian poet, put it this way:
“What is there but the sky, O Sun, that can hold thine image? I dream of thee, but to serve thee I can never hope,” the dewdrop wept and said; “I am too small to take thee unto me, great lord, and my life is all tears.”
“I illumine the limitless sky, yet I can yield myself up to a tiny drop of dew,” thus the Sun said; “I shall become but a sparkle of light and fill you, and your little life will be a laughing orb.”
Nothing else can slake our heart’s thirst for God except God. Jesus, take your staff, strike our hearts of stone, and cause a fountain of God-love to spring forth within us.
We pray with the Samaritan woman, “Sir, give me this water.”
John Foley, SJ
Fr. John Foley, SJ is a composer and scholar at Saint Louis University.
**From Saint Louis University