Jn 4, 5-42
«Whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst»
In his book *“The Gay Science,”* Nietzsche narrates the death of God. He doesn’t mean to say that God existed before and now has died, but rather that the idea of God has died in our culture; that it is no longer the center of our existence. And he is right. We killed God thinking we no longer needed him; thinking that thanks to science we would dominate Nature, conquer disease, and achieve full happiness in this life, but two centuries later, disease persists, Nature is dying, man forgets his humanity, ignores the eternal within him, fails to find the meaning of his life, and tries to fill the void this produces through compulsive work, compulsive leisure, alcohol, and drugs.
There is no doubt that the world is thirsty, even though it has not yet realized it; thirsty for some valid reference that shows it the way, thirsty for humanity, thirsty for meaning, ultimately thirsty for God. And today John tells us that Jesus dreams of quenching that thirst and offers us his water so that we do not return to feeling it. Jesus’ water is his Word that comforts and gives meaning to our lives. And the word is there, but the world does not know it because we have dynamited its channels of transmission. The best example is the Eucharist.
The life of the first Christian communities revolved around “the Lord’s Supper.” Thanks to it, they felt community, endured persecutions, and were fertile and contagious. Throughout the centuries, the Eucharist has been the transmission belt of the Word that has performed the miracle of bringing Jesus to us. Thanks to it, today Jesus is part of our lives, but if some relegate it because it is no longer mandatory and they have lost the fear of hell, others because they see no further than the rite that envelops it, and others out of laziness, Christians run the risk of forgetting the Word, losing the main bond of communion between us, and becoming marginal groups in extinction that represent nothing in the march of the world.
There was a time, not long ago, when the contact of Christians with the Word was permanent, because every Sunday they attended Mass and there the Gospel was read and commented on (better or worse). And that was reflected in their lives. There was a specifically Christian way of living that everyone identified as such and that contributed to humanizing society. But at a certain point, the Eucharist ceases to be the center of Christian life, churches empty, contact with the Word is lost, and that attitude of service motivated by the permanent relationship with it ceases to be the norm of life among Christians and becomes an exception.
In the Eucharist, the faithful gather, comfort one another with their presence, feel the need for God, listen to the Word (perhaps the only place where they hear it), remember the touching moment when Jesus felt himself to be food of the world shortly before dying, they pray together the prayer with which Jesus invited us to feel like Sons, they share communion with him and go out into the world well nourished and well motivated to proclaim the Kingdom with their life, that is, to live as Christians.
Miguel Ángel Munárriz Casajús
To read an article by José E. Galarreta on a similar topic, click here
English version translated with AI