March 21/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
Having watched my hiking companion drain the last drop from our shared water bottle, half an hour later I saw with great relief a place to refill it at the end of a hot mid-day hike. The deprivation had not been long, or severe, but I welcomed the chance to slake my thirst from a freshly-filled bottle. We’ve all experienced times of thirst, and appreciated those renewing moments of physical rehydration. Do we, can we, allow ourselves to experience such thirst and renewal in our spiritual lives? It is not, perhaps, as easy as it sounds. True yearning for God operates deep within us, beneath the level of rational thought — what the Hebrews called lev, or heart, regarded as the seat of wisdom and understanding, and what we might call our “gut.” It is a place not all of us are comfortable going. Safer to remain in a state of rhyme and reason, where we can maintain control and delude ourselves about our self-sufficiency. To long for God is to acknowledge that we are not complete in and of ourselves; it is to surrender to what twentieth-century Christian apologist C. S. Lewis called “the incommunicable and unappeasable want.” It is an ache. And it can take us by surprise: an especially gorgeous sunset, an hauntingly beautiful motet (like Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus), the soft down of an infant’s head, and suddenly we are overcome with yearning for . . . what? Wholeness, completion, a peacefulness and joy that lie just beyond our grasp. If we let ourselves yield to its power, this deep and unseen thirst will draw us toward the face of God, just as a deer is instinctively drawn to the presence of running, life-giving water. And there, in the fullness of time, our thirst will be eternally quenched.
O God of light and faithfulness, May our yearning lead us to a deeper knowledge and a greater love of you. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032122.cfm
To hear the Choir of New College, Oxford, sing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSh1BkZyE6Q
