Psallam​​ TIBI​

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VOS ADORATIS QUOD NESCITIS

 

YOU WORSHIP WHOM YOU DO NOT KNOW: this observation was quite matter-of-fact when Christ spoke it of the Samaritan woman. The fact that it can equally be applied to ourselves today is a crushing indictment of the state of our faith and the course of our lives, which should find as their source and summit the offering of the perfect sacrifice to God; true worship in spirit and in truth that makes us one body one spirit in Christ and gives us a glimpse of that eternal glory to which we sojourn in this valley of tears. Yet we, who have received the living waters and have the glory of heaven in our sights, too often fail to recognise Christ and to truly know him in the intimacy of the communion we share with him through the sacrament of his body and blood.

 

Consider, for a moment, who you are; your dignity, your place in the heart of God; that he has called you by name and raised you up to be his son through Jesus Christ. Consider who you are to God, beloved, and then consider who he is to you. Would you see him at the well and know him as your God? Can you recall that day you asked him to let you drink of his living waters, and how you felt its torrents within you would never subside? Do those waters still well-up within you, or have you allowed their spring to run dry? For too many of us, who thirsted for God and were quenched, we have become satisfied. Perhaps we have thought that with one taste we would never need to drink again. 

 

When Christ spoke of those who drink of the living waters never being thirsty again, he did not mean that we would never again be in need of these waters, but that our thirst would, from then on, always be sated from the spring of water within us, which gushes up to eternal life. Yet it is too easy to become complacent as one to whom the waters of eternal life have been given, and to live out our lives as one already saved, no longer thirsting. Yet it is to be continually quenched, that the spring of living waters wells up within us. That we may continually be in the process of directing our lives towards Christ; towards eternity with him. That we may continually seek to know and love him more deeply; to be bathed in the spirit and be possessors of the truth, which are the wellsprings of true worship.

 

Whilst this Gospel reading has, since early times, been a guiding light for Catechumens in their final preparation to receive the sacraments of initiation, it is also for those of us who have already been received into the embrace of Christ, an opportunity for us to reflect on the path our lives have taken, and prepare us to renew our baptismal promises at the Paschal Vigil. How, then, would we assess our progress towards eternal life? Are our lives a reflection of our worship, in spirit and in truth? Or has even our worship become a reflection of the banality of our lives, and our thirst for so many things, none of which find their source in the living waters of Christ?

 

If prayer has become dry and worship unfulfilling, and our lives of faith a wearisome burden, we should perhaps think first whether we are worshiping whom we do not know. For if we have indeed known God in the glory of the love with which he has revealed himself to us in Christ, then at the centre of our worship we would see only him, who offers himself there as the perfect sacrifice that makes peace for us with God. And the sacrament we dare to approach at the altar would be the true summit of our lives lived in that peace, from which we continue our journeys, now one body one spirit in Christ, to live in the new life of the streams of living water that in us gush upwards to eternal life.