Overcoming the heat wave

All of us have suffered from the recent heat wave nicknamed “Lucifer”. As one of the local news websites reported, such a heat wave has started forest fires, set off weather warnings alerts as well as damaged crops.

In an interesting article entitled “Protect yourselves during a heat wave”, Charmaine Gauci wrote: “Staying hydrated is essential throughout the year. However, drinking is even more important during the hot summer months. The best drink is water and do not wait to drink until you feel thirsty”. Gauci’s informative article made me realise how drinking water is, in fact, crucial to staying healthy during these excruciating hot temperatures we are having.

On a spiritual level, excruciating heat caused by “Lucifer” is dangerous for the soul’s wellbeing. Here, I reflect on Pope Francis’ address to the Roman clergy this year. In that long speech, the Holy Father said: “Evil has its origin in an act of spiritual pride and was born of the arrogance of the perfect creature, Lucifer. Then, it is infected in Adam and Eve, but finding support in their ‘desire to be like gods,’ not in their frailty.” Let us be humble enough and admit that all of us, I the first one, are tainted with that innate disordered desire to play God in our own ways. All of us like to grab the centre stage. However, as Psalm 63 rightly puts it, our souls thirst for God “as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1).

In his general audience of 25 April, 2001, with the theme Man thirsts for God, Saint John Paul II gave an interesting explanation on some key places in the Bible where water is mentioned. “The prophet Jeremiah had already proclaimed: the Lord is ‘the source of living waters’, and had reproached the people for having ‘hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water’ (2:13). Jesus himself would cry out in a loud voice: ‘If any one thirsts, let him come to me and drink he who believes in me’ (John 7:37-38). At high noon on a sunny and silent day, he promised the Samaritan woman: ‘Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4:14).”

If my soul is continually assailed by this spiritual thirst, how can I effectively quench my thirst? What kind of water should I to drink to overcome my spiritual dryness during the heat waves of the spirit that, every now and then, I have to undergo? In its section dealing with the name, titles, and symbols of the Holy Spirit, The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a succinct yet fruitful discussion on the significance of water as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, when it states in entry 694: “The symbolism of water signifies the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism, since after the invocation of the Holy Spirit it becomes the efficacious sacramental sign of new birth. Just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth in the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit. ‘By one Spirit we were all baptized, so we are also ‘made to drink of one Spirit.’ Thus the Spirit is also personally the living water welling up from Christ crucified as its source and welling up in us to eternal life.”

The experience of the saints clearly shows that God is the living and refreshing water which our dry, thirsty and weary souls direly need and fervently desire. Saint Louis de Montford said: “Pray with great confidence, with confidence based on the goodness and infinite generosity of God and on the promises of Jesus Christ. God is a spring of living water which flows unceasingly into the hearts of those who pray”. Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap