|
|
|
India, Lolín Menéndez rscj
|
Isaiah 12: 3
In the Shadow of the Word
One of the most basic needs of nomadic people is to find water. For that, it is necessary to dig wells. The accounts of Israel's patriarchs are woven around those wells which, at sundown, gathered the whole life of the clan.
In an old story in Genesis, Hagar (Sarah's slave) receives the angel of the Lord near a well:
The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. So she [Hagar] named the Lord who spoke to her, "You are El-roi"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" (Genesis 16: 7, 13).
Israel's matriarchs are remembered in relation to wells; it is near a well that Eleazar recognizes Rebecca as Isaac's future wife (Genesis 24) and where Rachel meets Jacob (Genesis 29: 1-13).
Lack of water becomes a cause of complaint and grumbling against Moses:
"Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here?",.. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
"Take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and com¬mand the rock before their eyes to yield its water, Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock". Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly and the congregation and their livestock drank (Numbers 20: 4, 7-8, 11).
From there they continued to Beer; that is the well of which the Lord said to Moses, "Gather the people together, and I will give them water." Then Israel sang this song:
Spring up, 0 well! -Sing to it!
the well that the leaders sank,
that the nobles of the people dug,
with the scepter, with the staff (Numbers 21: 16-18).
The prophets will change this remembrance into a promise for the future:
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation
(Isaiah 12: 3).
On that day a fountain shall be opened for the House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity
(Zechariah 13: 1).
On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter.
And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one
(Zechariah 14: 8-9).
The Book of Wisdom will evoke it thus:
They journeyed through the uninhabited desert,
and in solitude they pitched their tents....
When they thirsted, they called upon you,
and water was given them from the sheer rock, assuagement for their thirst from the hard stone....
once you had shown by the thirst they then had
how you punished their adversaries (Wisdom 11: 2, 4, 8).
And the Song of Solomon:
...a garden fountain, a well of living water,
and flowing streams from Lebanon (Song of Songs 4: 15).
One could say that waters still spring forth from the well in the memory of the Jewish people. Jesus's words refer to it:
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water. ‘ “' Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7: 37-39).
...one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear I and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.” And again another passage of scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced” (John 19: 34-37).
Paul picks up the rabbinic midrash that the rock followed along with the people in the desert, and he says to the Corinthians:
...all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10: 3-4).
Madeleine Sophie moves within this tradition, using a verb very characteristic of her language: "puiser," which has no equivalent in English (or Spanish) because its translation ("to draw") does not carry the connotation of drawing water from a well-(maybe we could say "to well" water).
In the Constitutions of 1815the word appears constantly: "They must draw (puiser) from his Heart the esteem and love of poverty" (69); "Hence it is from this Divine Heart that they must draw the love of this virtue and the manner of practicing it" (74); "drawing this holy joy from the Heart of Jesus" (118); "The Society, drawing its spirit from the most kind and compassionate Heart of Jesus" (166); "let the true love they bear...be drawn entirely from the Sacred Heart of Jesus" (201); "it is from [the Sacred Heart of Jesus] that she must always derive the light and the graces that she needs for herself, and that she should draw down upon all the members of the Society" (247); ''It is, in fact, from this Divine Heart that they will draw that spirit of humility, gentleness, sim¬plicity and obedience" (329); "Hence it is from this Divine Heart that they must derive the esteem and love, as well as the spirit and form of all the virtues which they should practice..." (338).
The whole charism of Madeleine Sophie is there:
...”you will find everything in the Heart of Jesus opened for us, let
us go to draw (puiser) the strength and courage we need.”
Praying with Madeleine Sophie
*Read slowly the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman near Jacob's well John 4: 1-42). There is a progressive dynamic of depth and transformation of what both of them expected: Jesus wanted someone to draw water for him, and the Samaritan came with her bucket looking for the same thing.
At the end we do not know if she drew water or if Jesus drank of it, but John gives us a significant detail: the woman "left her water jar." She had no need of it to obtain the living water that Jesus had made known to her. The Samaritan woman returns to her people with the spring of water Jesus has unveiled inside her, and she goes to others to deepen in them the thirst for living water.
Let the words of Jesus resound within you: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
*Name the fears and concrete difficulties that you experience in following Jesus and living his Gospel. Read it again, expanding your vision. Bring to the Lord's presence the discouragement and weariness of peoples, the slowness of work for the Kingdom, the slow advance of justice and reconcilia¬tion in the world. Let Madeleine Sophie say to you:
"You may be perfectly sure that you will find in the Heart of Jesus an inexhaustible spring of strength, grace, comfort.” Resting in him you can say: "I can do everything ...We can do anything in him who strengthens us.”
*If you are in a group you might put in the center an empty bucket or any empty clay jar, and talk about the different kinds of thirst of our world. Mention also any personal needs or needs of the group. Read from John 7.
From “In the Shadow of the Word”
Dolores Aleixandre rscj
Province of Spain South
|
