Aqua vitae

Over 70 per cent of the earth is covered in it. Seventy per cent of our bodies consist of it.

Without it, all living forms cannot grow and eventually die. Life only begins when it is present.

It cleanses, refreshes, even brings healing.

Beyond the physiological level, it is a gift of the Spirit, a gift that in baptism we are purified and reborn into new life.

What an unimaginably precious gift water is in all its rich nuances of meaning and yet, we often take for granted, misuse, and even abuse this gift.

Like the woman at the well, we have been given living water that will become “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” inside each of us.

However, very often our thirst for God takes us away from Him rather than toward Him for our senses and our intellect tell us that the other alternatives are more attractive.

Unless we are able to seek within, this thirst will never be slaked. Instead we become slave to things, people and ideas, finding temporal happiness but not much inner peace, driven on by our unquenchable needs, subsisting only on a primal level.

We become superstitious, idol-worshippers, spiritually bound by the walls of our worldly beliefs, living dependent "lives of quiet desperation" but convincing ourselves we are living the dream.

When the waters grow muddy. we lose the ability to see with supernatural clarity and eventually treat this baptismal gift as a mirage, a tantalizing but capricious figment of imagination.

To come to the spring within requires first the recognition and acceptance of self, of who I am.

Together with an openness of heart and mind to Jesus and a faith-filled imagination to see beyond what is perceived as reality, we can be transformed.

Just as the woman at the well was.

Now this is not a one-off, chance occurrence but something that can happen again and again in our lives , IF we allow it.

Today’s gospel reminds me of the importance of drinking regularly from the waters of life: to meet Jesus where I am and sit quietly, replete with His transforming love.

So if you're thirsty, travel inside and treat yourself to some living water. Satisfaction is guaranteed.