Third Sunday of Advent December 13, 2009 Vespers Reflection by Patricia Crowley, OSB.

I. Geography of the Advent Journey

Think for a moment of the different ways you, yourself, used water since you got up this morning….I used water in the bathroom to wash and shower and brush my teeth, in the kitchen to prepare hot water to drink as I stretched and reflected on today’s scriptures and as I finished up these reflections, in the living room to water the plants (which get so dry in the heat of our house!); As I walked across the yard I watched for frozen water on the sidewalk; I enjoyed the soup at lunch and drank a glass of water; I fetched water in my office to give to Dorothy …..to seal our community Christmas cards and to have a cup of hot water etc. etc. And you?

Water is an image that is very prevalent during this liturgical season of Advent. It comes in varying forms – springs gushing forth, streams in the desert, rivers, the dew, the raining down the just, waters released to barren lands. Today we have water in the story of John’s baptism of repentance.

In our world, water is often in the news:

1 think of the damage done by tidal waves and tsunamis;
2 think of rivers that are sites of memorable incidents like the two planes colliding over the Hudson;
3 or the growing awareness that the majority of the world’s population doesn’t have clean drinking water;
4 or remember the huge waves pounding against the shore of a Hawaiian island last week and attracting flocks of surfers from all over the world
5 or think of the attention our river gets in mid-March each year as it is turned green
6 think of the fear we have that our water could be contaminated by terrorists;

Water is essential. We know how inconvenient it is when the water is turned off in our houses for a bit. We know that we are gradually replacing old pipes in our buildings to keep that water flowing and how important that is.

On a very human level, we know that when we feel grief or loss or sadness or terror or joy, it is sometimes great relief to experience the healing and cleansing flow of tears.

And so today, we focus on the image of water. Luke presents John the Baptist, baptizing with water and answering different people’s questions with responses to live more simply, to share, to do what is necessary to live. John invites people to this and to wait for the “One who is coming ….to baptize with Spirit and with fire”. Two verses later, Luke presents the baptism of that One – Jesus. Matthew and Mark report that event as happening at the River Jordan.

Rivers are important places in the geography of our life’s journey:

1 the scriptures (The Moses story begins along the river, over the river Jordan lay the promised land…),
2 our lives,
3 and of our world.

Advent scenes of John the Baptist at the river are fruitful in the geography of our Advent journey.

This past summer I had the privilege of visiting St. John’s New Brunswick and experienced in the course of six hours, a river changing its direction. This was due to the strong tides – an amazing phenomenon and one that happens regularly to that river. We, in Chicago, know that phenomenon as humanly engineered to protect our water supply and our lake.

Sometimes we may feel that our lives and the events of our world flow on like rivers of and cannot be reversed. These river stories might lend us a different perspective on that belief.

I just finished reading Pat Conroy’s latest novel, South of Broad and this summer I re-read The Adventures of Huck Finn. Both pieces of writing feature rivers as central to the geography of relationships among the characters. Rivers often do epitomize meeting points where new depths of relationship happen. Certainly the gospel presents the river as a point of significant change in the relationship between God and humanity – first in the water of John’s baptism and then, in the river Jordan where the gospels present the opening of the heavens in the person of Jesus, the Christ.

Perhaps rivers give us an opportunity to reflect on where our relationships have deepened and where they might be deepening in our own river of life.

Rivers lead places, they cleanse, they quench. To explorers, rivers give a sense of direction. When we, as life’s explorers, meet a river, we might experience it as a point of decision-making. Which way is it flowing? Should I cross it? Am I going the right direction?

John Keats wrote an epitaph for himself that might teach us a little more about water …and about ourselves: Here lies one whose name was writ in WATER.
So… another reality of water is that its form is never permanent of itself…..nor is any one of us.

Advent invites us to explore many scriptural images. We have now looked at three of these:

1 the city of Zion with its resiliency in the midst of complexity of life (mentioned almost daily during this season),
2 the wilderness with its invitation to simplify life and clear our lives of clutter (also echoed often during Advent)
3 and now the river, the water, whose geography invites us to explore the cleansing, flowing, healing, power of the water of our lives.

(water)

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