The human body can survive only three days without water. How long can our souls survive without the living water of God's Presence?
C.S. Lewis says that our religious practices of worship, prayer, Scripture reading, etc. are not the thing itself, but only the preparation for our encounter with God. He likens our practices to digging a channel for grace, waiting for the arrival of water:
When we carry out our religious duties, we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last the water comes, it may find them ready....There are happy moments, even now, when a trickle creeps along the dry beds; and happy souls to whom this happens often (Reflections on the Psalms).
It seems to me that this is our answer to those who claim they get nothing from attending Mass. They are waiting either to be entertained or to experience some kind of encounter with Divinity. Many Catholics have left the church because they "were not being fed." While I do not deny that homilies and maybe music could often be better, I do not think God withholds His Presence -- His living water -- from us because our services are dull. Any more than He would withhold His grace from us because our prayers are dull and unimaginative.
One of the Psalms says, "God inhabits the praise of his people!" God commands us to praise Him because our praise opens the channel of our hearts to receive His grace: He gives Himself to us in our worship.
A rough analogy might be the beauty of our natural world. As long as we continue to walk with our heads down and our hearts heavy, refusing to look up at the sunrise, the sunsets, the horses in the meadow, the lapping water along the shore, and the majestic rise of the mountains on the horizon, all these wonders are dead to us, doing nothing to restore our sense of beauty and harmony. Once we give ourselves a moment to appreciate what is all around us, they in a sense "give themselves" back to us.
Our parish offers adoration of the Blessed Sacrament twice a week. To engage in adoration is to simply sit in the Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Nothing need be said, much as it is to sit quietly with someone you love and trust, without saying a word. Exciting? No. Inspiring? Not always. But one always leaves knowing they have been in a living Presence. The result is often Peace, Stillness, Confidence, a lessening of Fear, Trust.
Living Water for thirsty souls!
Saint Theresa speaks of prayer like this, the well producing after much work a little, muddy, water, to which the renewed application of labor, makes at last a fresh abundance. I always think of Helen Keller, the deaf and blind child who was made to go through the motions of finger-spelling, (meaningless, to her, patterns of bent fingers). A gushing faucet with the pattern "water" spelled into her hand broke suddenly into meaning. Water!
ReplyDeleteGood point! It must be terribly discouraging to be a priest. We must grow, plant, tend, a spiritual garden, furnish an interior space with good things, and do this timely. Thinking without practice, without good habits, is the nothing that comes of nothing- the barren fig tree.
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