“If you knew the gift of God who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” These words of Jesus to the woman at the well contain a powerful message of good news to those of us looking for something more in life. Jesus offers us the “living water” of God’s love to be received and spilled over to others.
This week I had the opportunity of meeting with our Encore Leadership Team. Encore is a new ministry directed to serving those parishioners 55 years and older in living a more personal, passionate relationship with God and with others in our parish family. During the meeting, I shared a passage of St. Bernard from the book, Soul of the Apostolate, about the relationship between the spiritual life and the active life/ apostolate. “’If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels.’ . . . The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. How many there are devoted to works, who are never anything but channels, and retain nothing for themselves, but remain dry while trying to pass on life-giving grace to souls! ‘We have many channels in the Church today,’ St. Bernard added sadly, ‘but very few reservoirs.’”
After sharing the above passage, one of the members of the group stated, “I see in those people who are aging, a reservoir that is filling, filling, filling. But the gates are locked up.” Her observation brought home to me a very important truth. Many of those who are aging have reservoirs filled with the love that comes from God and are ready to burst in their desire to share it. Unfortunately, the overemphasis of our culture upon strength, vitality, success and utility often lock up the gates to this reservoir of Divine love. Life becomes more about achieving than being.
What if we saw the aging among us as reservoirs of God’s love ready to be poured out? What if their love is a draught of the “living water” that Jesus comes to give us? Our world is thirsting and Christ is offering us a drink of “living water.” He is here in our midst and, I believe, in a special way among the aging members of our parish, whose “reservoirs are filling, filling and filling.”
Ad majorem Dei gloriam,
Fr. John F. Jirak
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