Homily: Tuesday - 4th Week of Lent 2017 - Streams of life-giving water

Yesterday, I mentioned how the 4th Sunday of Lent was a sort of dividing line in the Lenten season. During the first half of Lent, the scripture readings focus on penance, repentance, the prayer, fasting, and almsgiving which help us to bring our passions under control. This second half of Lenten assumes that we still continue to practice Lenten penances, of course, but the scripture readings and mass orations speak a lot more about the grace, the life, the healing, which comes from following Jesus. And we are invited to follow Jesus all the way to the cross.

Today, God’s power, his presence, his life, is symbolized in our first reading, by the water flowing from the Temple. The water that flows from God’s Temple, brings an abundance of life: the multiplication of living creatures, abundance of fish, fruit trees, unfading leaves, plants with healing properties.

This river of living water, would have been a stark comparison to the sea to the east of the Jerusalem Temple, the saltiest body of water on earth, the Dead Sea. It's called the Dead Sea for a good reason: nothing can live in it because the water is far too salty to support life. Ezekiel tells us that the river of living water was able to transform even the Dead Sea, to make its waters fresh.

Such is the result of God’s living water upon the land, but even greater is the power of God’s life in the human soul! He brings to life the deadened, salty, unfruitful parts of the human soul. Great sinners have been transformed into great saints.

This isn’t the first time this Lent we’ve heard of miraculous, living waters. On the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Jesus promised to give living water to the woman at the well—to those who believe in him. And in the Gospel today, a sick man lay near a whole reported to have healing properties, but he is healed, not by the pool, but by the word of Jesus.

The penances of this season, and particularly the Sacrament of Confession, strengthen our faith and dispose our souls to receive the living water of Jesus Christ. Perhaps this means that the Lord wishes to help us lay aside an old habit, an addiction, a compulsion, or perhaps he wishes to give us "a fresh, spiritual way of thinking", a new fruit he wishes to cultivate in us, a healing of a hurt, a resentment, a trauma, the effect of past mortal sins which have weakened our will and clouded our intellect.

May our Lenten penances help us to receive the living water Jesus wishes to cause to well up within us, the waters which come from his heart, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That our Lenten prayer, fasting, and almsgiving may bring about conversion and renewal within the Church.

For all those preparing to enter into Christ through the saving waters of Baptism and those preparing for full initiation this Easter, may these final Lenten weeks bring about purification from sin and enlightenment in the ways of holiness.

For those who have fallen away from the Church, who have become separated through error and sin,
for those who reject the teachings of Christ, for their conversion and the conversion of all hearts.

For those experiencing any kind of hardship or sorrow, isolation, addiction, or illness: may they experience the healing graces of Christ.