March 8/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
After long months of Zoom Mass, our parish church doors cracked open over the summer, with no choir, roped-off pews, and limited attendance. The sense of quiet joy and relief I experienced the first time my husband and I went back to live Mass — masked, sanitized, and appropriately distanced from fellow parishioners — was probably not unlike that of a parched animal lighting upon water. For the many whose age, health, or abundance of caution continue to keep them from the pews, the question in today’s psalm resonates deeply: “When shall I go and behold the face of God?” Of course we have everyday opportunities to behold the face of God — those moments of quiet prayer in the morning, an encounter with someone from our “pod” in whom we see Christ, the bedtime reflection on the day’s blessings. But the beauty and reverence of worship in a building that has been consecrated to that purpose is something special, and when we are deprived of it, as many still are, we crave it, and for the experience of God within it. In church or in our hearts, that desire for God exists deep inside, sometimes buried beneath our consciousness. It is a longing for – what? – wholeness, completion, the peace that passes understanding, the joy that lies just beyond our grasp. It is a purposeful emptiness, a powerful yearning that twentieth-century Christian apologist C. S. Lewis called “the incommunicable and unappeasable want.” As we seek to behold the face of God, we may — we must — follow that 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.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030821.cfm
To hear the Choir of New College (Oxford) sing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSh1BkZyE6Q
