There is an unquenchable thirst in every human soul for a love and for a life which will never end – which will utterly satisfy, which will fulfil and complete our humanity and eliminate its terror of lovelessness and death. Our pilgrimage through the desert of life takes us to many different campsites: those of our childhood, of our youth and of middle and old age. Along the way, we do encounter many oases of real love. But we also see many mirages. They promise a love which vanishes before our eyes. Even the real oases with their pleasant waters can only quench our thirst for a time. They leave us even thirstier for a different, a deeper, an all-consuming and fully satisfying water.

In the Bible’s book of Revelation, we are told of a river which flows from the sources of the water of life. “The angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street” of the heavenly Jerusalem. “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:1-2). The waters of that river are the eternal love and life of the living God, for God alone is love and life. The life-giving, fruitful and healing trees are those people who have believed in Him and have drunk deeply from the waters of God.

With the conception and birth of the Son of God as man, the river of life and love was transformed into a mighty waterfall cascading in torrents over into this world. For God had compassion on us in our self-inflicted thirst and on our vain efforts to satisfy it on our own. He poured Himself out into our human nature in the Child Jesus. He came to assuage our thirst with real, living water. As He once said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “if only you knew what God is offering and who it is that is speaking to you, you would have been the one to ask and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). Elsewhere, Jesus even says that “streams of living water” will flow from the heart of anyone who truly believes in Him (cf. John 7:38). On the Cross, those words applied to Jesus Himself. After His Heart is pierced with a lance, there flow out continuously blood and water (John 19:34). He was pouring out the waters of divine life and love pent up within Him. He did so initially through His death and then through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But the best is yet to come. The final phase of His plan to quench the eternal thirst of the human soul for fulfilment, that is, for God, will come at the end of time, when God will be all in all.

In the meantime, through the centuries and millennia, God continues to pour out the living waters of eternity in and through His Body, His Bride, the Church, in her liturgical worship and sacraments. He is flooding the earth not with the waters of destruction, as in the time of Noah, but with the waters of resurrection and of life. But He will do so, He can only do so, if the human heart has the humble faith and longing of Mary and Joseph to let it be done to it according to God’s Word (cf. Luke 1:38). The humility of the manger, the place where the animals fed, became the humiliation of the Cross. It, in turn, became the humble altar where human beings can feed sumptuously and drink deeply from God in the Holy Eucharist. Like every other church where the Eucharist is celebrated, the one we are in is a Bethlehem, a Hebrew word which means, “house of bread” – only now, it is the living House of living Bread, the flesh and blood of the risen Christ.

In human life, we can all, in desperation for love, make the mistake at some point of drinking any old water, even filthy or poisonous water.  Our need, nay our demand, for true love can drive us to distraction and to madness itself. We simply must have it and have it now. We can get so absorbed in the search that we will sell everything, even our souls, to get it. Yes, we hear all the talk about God’s love and life but, in our madness, we consider it irrelevant, of no consequence. We don’t see or feel it and find it too hard to search for it. Or we see it as a pitiful excuse for not getting our hands dirty in what we imagine to be “real” life and love. Or, in an incredible twist of fate, we decide that the easy waters of what modern life has to offer us are all the god we need. Or even that we ourselves are all the god we need. There are those who, from the heights of their pride, sniff and sneer at the Crucified, at His Church and at His sacraments. They believe the lie which Satan told in the beginning, that we can be gods without God.

And yet, from the crib to the Cross, the river of life which flows from the Lamb of God continues to pour and gush forth. If our abandonment of God is mad, God is still madder: He hopes against hope that we will at last realize the uselessness of other waters; that we will come and quaff the aching thirst of our deepest hearts and souls in the river of life; and that we will dive into it and, with all the redeemed, let it carry us down to the estuary of eternity and into the open sea of the Most Blessed Trinity. In agony on the Cross, Christ said, “I thirst.” He thirsts for our thirst for the waters of life and love. He still thirsts.

I remember my dad taking particular delight in a little, yellow-coloured tuppenny “Rudolph the reindeer” which he would put at the bottom of our Christmas tree. It had a red nose, as did my dad after a few glasses of cheer. As a teenager, I came across a reference to a deer in psalm 41. It reminded me, in a weird sort of way, of that little yellow one at home, and of my dad. It’s a psalm with which I fell in love and which still fills me with longing for the river of life the many times I come back to it. I offer some verses of it to you to sum up what I have tried to say in these few minutes. May it help you as it has helped me in the journey through the desert of life. Most of all, may it open your hearts to the Lamb of God in the manger and on the Cross, and to the river of life and love which He so desires to pour into your heart. May that river flow through you to your loved ones around the Christmas tree and table and bind all your hearts together in the life and love of God, until we all meet around the Tree of Life and the banquet of eternity in the new Jerusalem.

Like the deer that yearns

  for running streams,

so my soul is yearning

  for you, my God.

My soul is thirsting for God,

  the God of my life;

when can I enter and see

  the face of God?

My tears have become my bread,

  by night, by day,

as I hear it said all the day long:

  ‘Where is your God?’

Why are you cast down, my soul,

  why groan within me?

Hope in God; I will praise him still,

  my saviour and my God.

Deep is calling on deep,

  in the roar of waters;

your torrents and all your waves

  swept over me.

By day the Lord will send

  his loving kindness;

by night I will sing to him,

  praise the God of my life.

With cries that pierce me to the heart,

  my enemies revile me,

saying to me all the day long:

  ‘Where is your God?’

Why are you cast down, my soul,

  why groan within me?

Hope in God; I will praise him still,

  my saviour and my God.