Fr. Chris - Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

“The Source Of Life”


Today we witness a direct interaction between God and Creation. “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mk 4.41).
 
Indeed, who can speak and converse with Creation other than God? God made that very clear to Job. We may not know or understand God’s vast mind and unlimited abilities, but clearly, the wind and water know and obey God in all things.
 
This love, gratitude, and reverence for the presence and power of God in all creation is something we joyfully share with our Indigenous brothers and sisters.  
 
In our meditation last week upon the world’s Four Elements – air, earth, water, fire, we looked at God’s presence in the Landscape of our lives, earth and all creation, the stage upon which we move and have our being, performing our parts in the play of life. We could not exist without this backdrop in our life journey.     
 
We also recognize God’s presence in his creation of water. Genesis tells us, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Without water, the human being would perish, all creation would vanish. Water is the bridge between life and death.
 
Throughout history water has been called the ‘Source’ of life, God visible, and yet still strangely invisible, unless it is contained. Water changes its form with the landscape around it, easily mutating without argument into whichever form is presented to it, always levelling and balancing itself off in the spaces it is contained in, a humble response we might use when faced with conditions we cannot change.  
 
Like the lakes around us, one of the greatest of these containments is the ocean. John O’Donohue in his book, The Four Elements, says, “The presence of an ocean is so huge that it resembles the divine; its constant movement and soundings signal a powerful inner life. Surprising in such a huge force is its perfect sense of rhythm. The ebb and flow of the tide resembles in a strange way the ebb and flow of human breath … not surprising, given each of us came here from the waters of the womb and that primally we have all come out of the ocean at the beginning of [time].”
 
Yet, water is anonymous. It has no face, no identity. It does not offer the kind of intimacy we feel from the landscape or the warmth of the fire element. John O’Donohue, in ‘The Four Elements’, tells us, “People who work the ocean are aware of this element’s dark and unpredictable dimension.” An old fisherman once told him, “You can never get to know the sea. It is too full of surprises. Sometimes when it is calmest the most sinister storm is secretly building and about to explode within the waves around you.”  
 
Water is also symbolic of our subconscious, say psychologists like Carl Jung. “Out of this inner ocean all kinds of symbols surface. It is here the archetypes [of life] arise.” It seems there are ‘primal icons’ in the depths of our being which indicate we are all more alike than we are different on the surface. Clearly, God at work.
 
Our beloved tradition of ‘holy water’ for blessing and protection of self and others perhaps connects us to these primal iconic similarities between us, most beautifully expressed in the most beautiful sacrament of baptism. John says, “It is where the loneliness of [the human] being in a separate body is transfigured. One becomes an intimate family member of the People of the God. … the water element brings cleansing from the heavy, leaden gravity of earth; it brings one into the lightness and fluency of the World of Spirit. The well of life is no longer … outside [of us]. The well of the Spirit is now within [us].”
 
Truly, as water satisfies our bodily thirst, Christ satisfies our spiritual thirst with true refreshment. “Like as the deer yearns for the running streams, so does my soul yearn for you my God.”
 
Perhaps it is here we come closest to sharing the same sacred ideal with our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Nothing can satisfy our inner spiritual thirst, can truly refresh us except God, God with us, in us, and around us in all creation.
 
Let us think of God, the ‘Source of Life’, in every drink we take of his miraculous water, and every drink we take of his grace and spirit within.  
                    
– Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario​