Feast of St. Theresa of Avila - 2009

Carmelites

 

 ©Bishop Martin Amos

I found on the web this news clip on Friday, October 9, 2009 read NASA scientists intentionally crashed a 2.2 ton rocket into the moon to determine whether water exists on our closest celestial neighbor. The rocket's impact – it came in at 5,600 mph, twice the speed of a bullet – threw up 772,000 pounds of lunar debris, creating a 6.2 mile high spray.

Trailing closely behind the rocket was the sophisticated L-CROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) which flew right though the debris and transmitted back to NASA images that scientists are scouring for evidence of ice. Flying so closely behind, the satellite also took the fatal plunge, plowing into the moon only four minutes behind the rocket.

They have not revealed the results, but were pleased with the process.

Water is of major importance to all living things

  • Some organisms are made up of 90% water
  • Up to 60% of the human body is water,
  • The brain is 70% water
  • Your blood 82%
  • Your lungs 90%

 

And pure water is colorless, odorless and tasteless

  • Where there is water there is life
  • And where water is scare life has to struggle
  • And where there is no water, there is no life

There just wouldn’t be any you or me without an ample water supply on Earth

Water figures so prominently in our Scriptures:

  • Chapter l, verse one:  darkness covered the abyss while a mighty wind swept over the waters
  • The water of the great flood with Noah and the Ark
  • The waters of the Red Sea that parted
  • The waters that flowed from the rock at Meribah
  • The water of the Jordan in which Christ was baptized
  • First miracles water changed into wine
  • Disciples were fishermen
  • Christ’s words:  no one can enter into God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit.
  • The water and blood that flowed from Christ’s side

 

The gospel reading today tells us about a woman who goes to a well to draw water

  • She is promised water with properties that went far beyond her wildest imagining:
  • Living water

 

This we too seek the source of “living water” and in the process insight and truth

Born at the time of the Protestant Reformation and died after the Council of Trent

 

  • She has been described as  “intelligent, hardheaded, charming and deeply spiritual”
  • Someone else said she was “talented, outgoing, affectionate, courageous . . . totally human.  She is wise, yet practical; intelligent, yet much in tune with her experience; mystical, yet an energetic reformer
  • A woman, a contemplative, a reformer

 

  • Her life was marked with illness,
  • Doubt about the authenticity of her experiences
  • Reformation of the Carmelites

 

One of the stories is that many people freely visited the convent and she began to spend much time in the parlour of the monastery conversing.  She began to neglect mental prayer and persuaded herself that this was a part of humility and she wasn’t really worthy to converse so much or so familiarly with God.

She had stopped going to the well to draw water

Finally a Dominican friar pointed out to her the dangerous state she was in.  She returned to private prayer and never again abandoned it.

I wonder if that little story might not be the jumping off point for further reflection.

  • Because each of our lives is unique and each of us needs particular graces at particular times:

    O  I am not suggesting that you stop visiting or talking

    O  I am not suggesting that you are not doing private prayer

  • But I am suggesting you go to the well with true humility and ask what it is the Lord wishes you to take up or what is it that God wishes you to put away.

    O  It may be something very little and very simple

    O  It may be something very important and necessary

    O  How thirsty are you?

 

Where this is water, there is life

Where there is no water, there is no life.

I am the living water come down from heaven.