Caught up in the upset of my familiar routines, I just remembered to write my reflection for today. I know this will be about four hours late. What is going on in our country today is upsetting everyone. Local Churches have been shut down indefinitely. These conditions make it even more important that we make use of online resources to sustain our faith…and for writers, like myself, to stay on schedule.
Locally we have been invited to online Masses, zoom prayer meetings, and our family is trying to do a “Face Time” rosary at 7 PM each night. Having become overly-dependent on the institutional Church to tell us what the Holy Spirit is saying, we now have to depend more on the Holy Spirit within and among ourselves.
This said, I thought the readings today were apropos. In the first reading the prophet Ezekiel prophesies a move of God in which living water would flow out from the Temple into the world and become an amazing river of water (Ezekiel 47:1-9,12).
“Wherever the river flows every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along the banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; the leaves shall not fade, nor fruit fail…Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
Wow! Let the river flow! When is God going to fill the Temple so full that this supernatural water starts to inundate the world with its life-giving power?
Then we go to the gospel story where a lame man seeks healing from the Bethesda Pool (John 5:1-16). Complaining that he can’t reach the water, he says to Jesus:
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”
This Bethesda Pool had healing power and probably reminded people of the powerful river Ezekiel spoke of. Trouble is, the fellow who needed the water, couldn’t reach it. So, then comes the surprise! Jesus brought the water to him.
“Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.’ Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.’”
The living water inside the heart of Jesus—the river of water that he carried to people wherever he went—flowed into the lame man, and he became well—instantly!
Jesus is the new Temple. From his side flows the living water that turns into the river of life, refreshment, and healing. The least deserving person—the complaining paralytic—had access to a source of water that was much more powerful that the water in the Bethesda Pool.
Now comes our catechism question: Is there a name for this “living water?” You know, of course, the answer. It is the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that when the Holy Spirit came he would be a fountain of living water welling up within those who received him. And that means us! We continue through the charisms of the Holy Spirit to be vessels of “supernatural water” to the world.
So in these times of great turmoil and confusion, when it looks like a familiar era is dying right in front of us, the water of the Holy Spirit is being stirred within each of us. What new things is God doing in our lives? What new era of Church is he creating in our midst?
“A clean heart create for me, O God” (Ps 51:12)
