FEAST OF ST. MARY MAZZARELLO, CO-FOUNDER OF THE FMA

 

FRIENDS and SERVANTS of the WORD

Fourth Monday of Easter Time

May 13, 2019

FEAST OF ST. MARY DOMENICA MAZZARELLO

WORD of the DAY 

As the deer longs for streams of water,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God.

When can I enter and see the face of God?

(Psalm 42)

 

How shall I live this Word?

These verses are from today’s Responsorial Psalm.  The content regards an image of nature in the freshness of a memory that is poetic but above all existential.  It deals with a dear seen at the moment in which it is very thirsty and searches for vivifying water for its life.  The analogy is strong.  We have all experienced  how hard it is to be thirsty on a torrid summer day in the city.  And we well know how restored we feel when our lips reach a source of pure, fresh water.

The analogy is transparent.  Often we are thirsty, not so much for material things but rather for what is right, good, and beautiful.  These, of course, can be found not only in what satisfies at the level of senses and material riches, of what is soon consumed, decays, tires, disappoints or dies.  Yes, it is for You, O God, Infinite Love, for which the soul and heart long.  In this psalm, the author asks God to send His light and His truth.  Precisely what you and I have extreme need of.

Lord, do not allow me to drink of any cistern that offers me only material goods.  I do not deny my gratitude if I have them, but I pray You Lord that like and more than a deer, let me slake my thirst at the courses of living water that are prayer, the Sacraments, the constant practice of the highest precept of the whole Bible, ‘love your neighbor as yourself’.

The Voice of John Nicolini

With the analogy of the thirsty deer, the Psalm expresses the condition of the believer as ‘thirst’.  Throughout the psalm, we are accompanied by a ‘dialogue’ between the prayer and his soul.  In fact, it is ‘our soul that thirsts for God, the living God’.  How should we understand ‘soul’?  we can consider it as our inner person, as the depths of our being.  We can think of it as the level of our life where the deepest experiences of our existence happen.  We can think of our soul as that which faces a reality that goes beyond our own death…’when shall I see the living God?’

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