Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the
waters:
And you who have no money,
Come buy
and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without
money and without price.[i]
The
only requisite for drinking at the wellspring of salvation is thirst. We have no coin of our own, no works, no
penitence, no disciplines, no righteousness, no attributes, and no credits of
any kind that will purchase the deep draught of the water of Life. Come as you are, come in your poverty, come
in your grief, come in your abject helplessness and drink freely of the living
water. He did not come for the
spiritually affluent but for those who are thirsty.
Ah! There lies the rub. Have you discovered your need? Do you think you can buy this lively water
with your own coin? He has said, “no one
is justified by the law in the sight of God” (Gal. 3:11). The only coin you need is deep thirst. Come as you are to the banquet table of the
Presence of God. Bow humbly and drink.
Our
human condition is such that too often our need, our very thirst itself, is so
sharp that it becomes all consuming and drives out the very the thing we need
most. We are filled with grief, filled
with self-pity, filled with a sense of inadequacy, filled with helplessness and
instead of turning outward to Him we turn inward and become focused on the
causes of our thirst.
The antidote is to
surrender our human pain and frustration and begin to acknowledge that He who
became one of us, did so because He loves us even when we cannot love
ourselves. This has less to do with
emotion than with decision. The simple
acknowledgement that I am loved by the lover of my soul, whether or not I feel
it, is the beginning of a step through our difficulties into His Presence. The decision to accept that love is prior to
the feeling that comes from living within that decision.
That decision to
accept Divine love is a hinge that swings the door of our soul outward from
introspective preoccupation with the causes of our thirst and outward into the
light. Drinking at the well is not a
passive experience, but an active and ongoing reception of the love that is
offered. It is an old mystical perception that in the desire is the
fulfillment. We must first allow
ourselves to desire in order that we may be filled.
It
is not that we should avoid the knowledge of our pain. What I said was that the acknowledgement that
we are loved is a step “through” our difficulties. We are to come as we are. We can come no other way. That acknowledgement of our realities makes
possible the surrender of our pain to Him who alone can heal and deliver. You cannot surrender what you do not
acknowledge. You cannot surrender that
which you will not release. Once you
have acknowledged that you are loved, once you have acknowledged your pains and
lifted them up in surrender you are already beginning to drink.
Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the
waters:
And you who have no money,
Come buy
and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price. - Isaiah 55:1
~ Dom Anselm+ Obl. OSB
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