Water

‘Whoever believes in me, life-giving streams of water will pour out from their heart’. Jesus said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were going to receive. John 7: 38, 39

The author of life is the fountain of life… Let us seek the fountain of life, the fountain of living water, like intelligent and most wise fish, that there we may drink the living water that springs up to eternal life.
Columbanus

Slake your thirst from the streams of the divine fountain. The fountain of life calls to us: ‘Let whoever is thirsty come to me and drink’.

Take note what you are to drink; remember what God spoke through Jeremiah: ‘They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and drunk from leaking cisterns.’. The person who thus drinks is the person who loves, who draws satisfaction from the Word of God, who adores, who yearns, who burns with the love of wisdom…
Adapted from the Gaelic

Fechin had a God-given ability to cause water to flow in dry places. St. Fechin’s well, in County Sligo, Ireland, marks the place where he prayed for a source of water for a parched region. At Fore, life was so hard for the monks that Fechin hewed out rock with his own hands until water burst through. At Omly, he immersed the entire pagan population in the waters of baptism. At his death in 665 a friend saw a light so bright that all Ireland’s demons fled for a time.

What would the world be
Once bereft of wet and of wildness?
Let them be left, O let them be left
Wetness and wildness.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bathe us in your cleansing rivers.
Soak us in your healing waters.
Drench us in your powerful down-falls.
Cool us in your bracing baths.
Refresh us in your sparkling streams.
Master us in your mighty seas.
Calm us by your quiet pools