How to Drink From the Living Stream
The Lord will guide you always
and satisfy your thirst in parched places,
will give strength to your bones
And you shall be like a watered garden,
like a flowing spring whose waters never fail (Isaiah 58:11).
Editor’s note: This Lent, the Catholic Women in Business team is exploring the theme “Cultivating Virtue in the Desert.” Learn more here.
We Are Parched
Like the woman at the well (John 4:4-42), we are parched, Lord. Give us this living water.
We are spiritually parched in the midst of so much evil, violence, impurity, and contempt of God in the world. We are parched by disappointment in ourselves at how this Lent has gone so far. The world is working to diminish our faith at every turn. How will we become watered gardens, renewed in God’s love?
What Is Faith?
St. Paul calls faith the “evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1)—unseen, yes, but not unexperienced. Our faith is not blind but full of the vision of God’s constant goodness. We have faith in a future Heaven, because we experience it in part now. St. Thomas Aquinas says that faith is more certain than science, because it is the word of God. Scientific theories change, but “my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
The virtue of faith leads us to the living water we seek. The spring that never fails is the eternal love and mercy of God. Everything that parches us is passing away, but the love of the Holy Trinity is forever. If we put our faith in God, the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit will revive our parched souls.
Choose Life
Moses’ stirring last words (Deuteronomy 30:15-20) to his people remind us that we have only two choices. “Choose life,” he said.
Today, we could say, “Choose the freshness of life in Christ, who has conquered the worn-out dryness of the world.”
We have a choice between faith in the world, which will always leave us unsettled, or faith in God, who satisfies our thirst for peace and purpose. We can focus on what’s wrong with us and the world, or we can look with the eyes of our heart on Jesus in his Eucharistic fecundity.
Taking Action
In these final days of Lent, we can “go into the kick” to renew our yearning for this living water by visiting Jesus, present for us in the tabernacle. Unlike earthly water, which satisfies only physically, the living water of faith in Jesus elevates us to be more like the saints, who thirsted for him alone, letting their thirst for the world fade away.
By engaging with the Eucharistic Jesus, our earthly attachments fall away, because there is less room in our heart for them. Cultivating the virtue of faith is a gentle way to rid ourselves of lesser loves.
Invite God in
The 12-step programs have some great advice: “Don’t think your way into a new way of acting; act your way into a new way of thinking.” Spending 15 minutes every day that we can before the tabernacle is an action that will always increase our faith.
Making ourselves available to Jesus in person brings spiritual fruit that shows up in unmistakable grace later on. We are kinder, less touchy, more generous. Through actions that increase our faith in Jesus, we become the watered gardens that Isaiah extolled so long ago. We become more like Mary, the ultimate watered garden, who is “full of grace.”
Rose Folsom is an author, speaker, and spiritual director who has helped over 6,000 Catholics have a deeper connection with God so they can have less stress, make better decisions, and have more peace in their lives. Her own prayer life started at zero when, in her thirties, she was called into the Catholic church -- so she knows what it’s like to wonder in prayer if God’s even listening, and how distraction and inconsistency can lead to discouragement. Ever since, she’s been sharing ways to help people with that, because anyone can learn the skills to have a great prayer life. Download her free gift, “Three Things You Can Do Today to Jumpstart Your Prayer Life” at https://virtueconnection.com/.