The Living Water of Holy Week

What does it mean for water to be living? I’ve always been drawn to water, whether that be the little streamlet in our backyard at home, or the meandering waterways on the coast. There’s something different about the air around it. It’s as though a river, in all of its running, has slipped some of itself, dispersed, out into the air and into your lungs. I feel that as a welcome, as a greeting. Though it be faint and dampened, I can almost hear the water in all of its hushed frankness, “it’s been too long. Where have you been?”

Recently, I was in Boston for a dear friend’s wedding, and I was startled into silence when we stumbled upon the murals of the Boston Public Library. So much unexpected beauty! I drank in the images of the muses near the grand staircase, and the Sir Galahad room. In my unapologetic museum-habit, I wandered around completely untethered from the group I was with-- they would find me when they wanted to leave. In my dazzled daze, my eyes followed a couple who turned into a back stairwell, and I followed them. No one else seemed to be up on the next level. Indeed, no one seemed to even know about it, except for these people in front of me. But I could see a glimpse of more beauty up at the top, and I needed to see it, so I climbed after them.

Jesus met me at the top of the stairs, hanging on the cross. Everything within me wanted to fall on my knees and hang my head with him, but I stood staring, not able to move my eyes from his glory. Adam and Eve were bound up on either side of him, each holding a cup that caught the blood streaming from their Redeemer’s outstretched hands. And I felt a difference in the air up there, as though something-- was it Christs’ exhausted exhalations, or the vapor of his flowing blood?-- had entered into my lungs, and changed my breathing.

“And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. [...] And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem.” (Zechariah 13:6; 14:8).

“He endur’d the nails, the spitting,

Vinegar, and spear, and reed:

From that holy Body broken

Blood and Water forth proceed:

Earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean

By that Blood from stain are freed” -- Latin hymn, Lustra sex qui jam peracta

The blood and water from Jesus’ pierced side are still flowing from Jerusalem, still flowing from the altar of His cross. I know, because it found me at the top of that stairwell in Boston, and it finds me every Sunday in the outstretched hands of a priest. And each Sunday, without fail, a part of me feels, if I pay attention, that it truly has been too long. A week is such a long time to go without water. “I need Thee every hour, stay Thou nearby.”

“Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the sanctuary; and, behold, waters issue out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar. [...] Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed. And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live.” (Ezekiel 47:1; 8-9).

“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” --John 7:37.

This Holy Week, I want to be like the Eve that found me at the top of the stairwell. I have stolen the forbidden fruit, it is true. But my Savior has made a place for me at his feet. Lord, I am not worthy that I should come under the roof of your outstretched arms, not worthy to crouch beneath your blood flowing down. But oh, dear Lord, bind me to your cross, to your agony! Let me hold out my cup beneath you! And perhaps, when I hear you cry out that you thirst, I might hear you murmur to me, “drink of me, my child.”