Because the baby kept her up all night, her mother turned her over to us in the morning so she could get some sleep. Naturally, we received our granddaughter with not a little excitement.
After lolling and rolling on our bed for a while, the little one got bored and began crying.
The wife having left me alone in the room, I had no choice other than to pick the baby up. I brought her to the balcony, where she could see the rain.
Which calmed her, affording me a moment of reflection.
I thought of the rain, its uses aside from as pacifier, something that a baby’s restless mind can suck on. From the obvious, I moved to the spiritual, and recalled that rain likewise served as a metaphor (together with fire, cloud and others) for the Holy Spirit.
John writes that Jesus alluded to water when referring to the Holy Spirit’s indwelling in the soul, “The water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting.”
In a poem, Cantar del alma que se huelga de conocer a Dios por fe (Song of the soul that rejoices in knowing God by faith), John of the Cross, saint and mystic and among the greatest poets in the Spanish language, wrote of the Blessed Trinity using the image of water.
The poem begins with these lines:
For I know well the spring that flows and runs, although it is night.
By spring he means the Blessed Trinity – the central mystery of the Christian faith, the mystery of the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John Donne calls the Blessed Trinity the “three-personed God.”
“Although it is night” suggests the Dark Night of the Soul, the title of a famous poem by John of the Cross. The dark night of the soul signifies the journey of a soul towards mystical union with an unknowable God, which night John of the Cross describes as obscure, but “fevered with love’s anxiety.”
Eleven three-line stanzas follow, each numbered and containing the refrain, “although it is night,” except for the tenth (“because it is night”).
1. That eternal spring is hidden, for I know well where it has its rise, although it is night.
2. I do not know its origin, nor has it one, but I know that every origin has come from it, although it is night.
While we cannot know God, the mysterious spring, we know where its waters well up. Besides, not only does God, being eternal, have no origin, he is himself the origin of all things.
3. I know that nothing else is so beautiful, and that the heavens and the earth drink there, although it is night.
4. I know well that it is bottomless and no one is able to cross it, although it is night.
5. Its clarity is never darkened, and I know that every light has come from it, although it is night.
6. I know that its streams are so brimming, they water the lands of hell, the heavens, and earth, although it is night.
The perfectly beautiful, bottomless, clear, and abundant – descriptions of the eternal spring, which is God.
7. I know well the stream that flows from the spring is mighty in compass and power, although it is night.
8. I know the stream proceeding from these two, that neither of them in fact precedes it, although it is night.
The stream that flows from the spring (the Father) is no other than the Son, Jesus Christ, and the stream proceeding from the two (the Father and the Son) is the Holy Spirit.
9. This eternal spring is hidden in this living bread for our life’s sake, although it is night.
10. It is here calling out to creatures; and they satisfy their thirst, although in darkness, because it is night.
11. This living spring that I long for, I see in this bread of life, although it is night.
And where is this living spring? To John of the Cross it is in the consecrated bread and wine, in which Christ is really present.
So now we know what John of the Cross means with the line in stanza 1– “That eternal spring is hidden, / for I know well where it has its rise…” The unknowable, eternal spring flows out of the Eucharist.
The host, the living bread, the living spring, for which John of the Cross yearns, quenches the thirst of every man and woman.
This thirst, greater than and as immediate as the thirst for mere water, marks us for the next life.
As Charles Baudelaire said, “The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.”
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