March 16/Third Monday of Lent
As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God? ~ Ps 42.2-3
Sometimes, when we pause for a moment and we’re not busy being, well, busy, we experience a deep yearning that we cannot quite describe. It might occur as we are gazing at a sunset, or stroking a baby’s soft head, or listening to a particularly exquisite piece of music (like Palestrina’s gorgeous and poignant musical interpretation of Psalm 42). It is a piercing ache for – what? – wholeness, completion, a peacefulness and joy that lie just beyond our grasp. This, I believe, is the longing for God that the Psalmist experiences as physical thirst (using two Hebrew verbs associated with craving water). It might seem strange to describe the soul as thirsty; thanks to the Greeks, we have learned to regard the soul and the body as separate entities rather than as “an ensouled body, an embodied soul,” as ethicist and theologian Margaret Farley has proposed. Hebrew knows no such distinctions: what is here translated as “soul,” the Hebrew nefesh, denotes one’s complete being, the life force, the self animated by the breath of God. Many of us keep going at a frenzied pace so that we can avoid confronting the emptiness within. When we do allow ourselves to be still, however, we may experience a powerful and purposeful yearning for something beyond our grasp, that “wistful longing” that twentieth-century Quaker spiritual guide Thomas Kelly considered “the Eternal Goodness calling you to return Home, to feed upon green pastures and walk beside still waters and live in the peace of the Shepherd’s presence. It is the life beyond fevered strain.” As we seek to behold the face of God, we may — we must — follow our soul’s thirst to the living, abundant waters of his eternal love.
O God of light and faithfulness, May our yearning lead us to a deeper knowledge and a greater love of you. Amen.
To hear the New York Polyphony sing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUuaA8DKiQ
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031620.cfm
