Part of the baptismal ceremony for infants is the blessing of the waters of the sacrament. It is a wonderful blessing that tells the history of salvation through the story of the living waters. It is a panorama of events from Sacred Scripture:
At the very dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the waters, making them the wellspring of all holiness. The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness. Through the waters of the Red Sea you led Israel out of slavery, to be an image of God’s holy people, set free from sin by baptism. In the waters of the Jordan your Son was baptized by John and anointed with the Spirit. Your Son willed that water and blood should flow from his side as he hung upon the cross.
It is as Jesus tells Nicodemus, he must be born of water and Spirit – it is what we celebrate in the Sacrament of Baptism. One chapter later in John’s gospel Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asks her if she wants “living water” (hydor zon), an expression that has two possible meanings. It can mean fresh, running water (spring water as opposed to water from a cistern), or it can mean living/life-giving water.
From the side of Jesus, water flowing as a means of living waters of baptism for the whole world.
It was an image foreshadowed in the first reading today from the Prophet Ezekiel: “I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east.” It is water that“ flows…and empties into the sea, the salt waters, which it makes fresh. Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail. Every month they shall bear fresh fruit, for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary.” (Eze 47:9,12)
As the New Testament mentions in several places, Jesus is the new Temple, the one Ezekiel was describing. And as St. Paul reminds us, in our Baptism, born from above by water and the Holy Spirit, we too are temples of God.
The challenge is to live out our baptismal promises and be like Ezekiel’s Temple vision: a source of living water in which our faith and witness makes fresh and new the lives of others.
Image credit: Photo by Pixabay – macro-photography-of-water-waves-355288 | CC0