Empowered from within

He that believes in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (Jn. 7:38).

Jesus promised the woman at the well (Jn. 4) "a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  Amazing!  He did not tell her to obey the commandments, or to go confess her sins, or to seek out religious teachers.  He simply told her to ask Him for the living water.

So many people imagine that religion comes from outside of us, that first we hear the commandments and teachings of others, and then we try our best to follow them, and somehow, that will lead us to eternal life, if we are persistent and good enough.  It is true that in the ordinary order of things, we do tend to hear the commandments and teachings if we grow up in a religious tradition.  But that is not "the spring of water welling up to eternal life."  That is how most of us begin to search for the spring.  It is not yet the living water that Jesus promised us. All of the Old Testament reveals the Father Who is waiting to pour out from heaven "living water" on His people.  But, until Jesus, it was just too hard to believe in that relationship with God.

Even those not fortunate enough to be exposed early on to the commandments and teachings of religious men can drink from the waters of the Spirit.   Even those who reject the teachings they heard as children can still experience the living water of which Jesus spoke. 

Today, the Catholic church celebrates the feast of St. Augustine, who was the first Christian to regard his own life story as the perfect starting place for reflecting on the experience of God.  As he looked back, He saw the hand of God teaching him and guiding him toward his destiny.  He did not convert to Christianity because of any early teachings; although his mother was a devout Catholic, his father was a pagan, and Augustine felt no attraction to Christianity.  He pursued the philosophies of the Greeks and of the Manichees in his very intellectual search for meaning.  His spirit was always restless as he searched; he tried everything.  His conversion came as the result of a mystical encounter with the living God, as he heard a child singing in the garden:  "take up and read; take up and read."  He was standing next to a bible, which he took up and read on the page where it fell open.  And suddenly, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and for the first time in his life, He knew that for which he had been searching all his life.

Most of us believe that mystical experience is only for saints.  But "mystical" simply means that somehow God reaches into our souls and touches us beyond any teaching, any words, any thought, any external influence.  It does not have to "feel" holy; C.S.Lewis was not ecstatic at all when he knelt down as "the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom."  For him, there was a moment of simply clarity empowered from within that caused him to kneel.  He was not at all trying to follow anyone's teaching or rules -- he just didn't accept any of them.  Instead, he was following what was deepest and most true inside of himself.

In the same way, Ruth Barrows (Before the Living God) describes herself as a teenager who had been sent to the chapel as a punishment for acting out at a class retreat.  As she sat alone in the chapel, she suddenly became aware of being in touch for the first time with what was deepest and most true within herself -- reality as she knew it.  She had an experience of God within her own life story.  *

Neither of these people (nor St. Augustine) "thought" their way into this experience.  It bubbled up from within them.  That is a "mystical" experience, and it is as different from "following one's religion" as reality is from fantasy.  When we experience oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty within ourselves, for the first time in our lives, we know what we have to do.  We kneel, we worship, we follow, we believe, we taste, we know joy.  And it is joy that finally leads us forward.

Those who are thirsty for this experience know where the well lies.  Like St. Augustine, our own life story is a good starting place for finding God.  Somewhere in there we did meet Him, even if that meeting has since been buried under tons of debris.  If we can return to that point, it is possible to re-connect with the Living God.  The woman in the Gospel met Jesus at the well; I wonder where we have met Him.

*note: the example of C.S.Lewis and of Ruth Barrows come from Ron Rolheiser's article, "Mysticism Achieved in Ordinary," Mississippi Catholic, July 13, 2012.  While I did not start out to re-iterate Rolheiser's comments, that is where I ended up.  My apologies to Rolheiser if I failed to do justice to his ideas.