Homily

Yesterday at Vespers, we blessed the water that we will use for the coming year. And there it is. It looks so very ordinary and it tastes the same as it did before the blessing with the addition of a few small pieces of beeswax; and if you took some of it and put it in a glass and set it on the kitchen counter, nobody would know it was holy water unless you told them it was, except for angels, demons and vampires. And if it were in a glass on the counter, someone would either drink it or pour it out. That's how ordinary it looks.

Regular water to us also seems very ordinary. You have all used water today and you will use it again and again, but you probably won't even give it a thought, despite the fact that water is absolutely essential to our health and our life. We pretty much take water for granted. Most of us are aware that 70% of the earth's surface is covered by water. But did you know that 97% of all the water on earth is in the oceans as salt water? So only about 3% of all water is fresh water and most of that is locked up in ice at the north and south poles and another portion is in the ground in aquifers and wells. Only about .036% of all the earth's water is in lakes and rivers. Or, if you calculate it in a different way only .8% of the earth's water is usable, fresh water. I think that's amazing.

Yet, there is a lot of water on our planet, roughly 326 million, trillion gallons of it, and if we could weigh it, the scale would have to be very big because it would come to 1.5 quintillion tons, which would be a 1.5 with 18 zeros after it. That's a staggering number of tons, and yet if the earth were the size of a basketball and we gathered up all the water it would fit into a ping pong ball.

It seems that water is pretty much everywhere, but fresh and drinkable water is in short supply for about 1/3 of the world's population who do not have access to it as much as they would like. Think about our own access to water which is cheap, safe to drink, as much as we wish to use. It comes into our homes through strange and mysterious processes and systems that no one really understands and it's there safe and available whenever we want it. We could survive without electricity. But what would happen if our water systems no longer brought water into our homes? Some people have wells, but they are dependent on electric pumps. And the rest of us? Take a few seconds and think about all the people just in Springfield, having to get all of their water from the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, by bucket and jug and jar. Can you imagine that scene?

Water is fascinating and essential in many other ways. Our own bodies are made largely of water—65% of our body is water. There is not a beast, a bird or a bug that does not contain its share of water, and every single plant and tree also holds within it a fair amount of water down to the tiniest blade of grass and the smallest of seeds. We take in moisture when we breathe in, and we release moisture when we breathe out. We drink in water or beverages that are made with water, and we get water in our food as well. We put out water in sweat, tears, sneezing and peeing. Our cycle of moving water mimics the cycles of the earth's movement of water as the oceans evaporate and that moisture forms clouds which will later bring rain to some part of the world, and some of that rain will end up in rivers that will flow back to one ocean or another as the world’s water is constantly moving from one place to another, in one form or another, moving in cycles of salt, to fresh, to ice, to rain, to snow, to fog, to hail, to ½-liter bottles at Safeway. It's the same old water! There is no water factory producing new and fresh H₂O. It's the same old water that's been around for ages upon ages, billions of years, recycled and moving from one place to another, one plant, one animal, one glacier, one cloud, one river to another. The water you drink today may be some of the same water a dinosaur drank millions of years ago, or the same water that was once part of a honeycomb in China, or some of the same water that was in the egg of a hummingbird in Peru 25 years ago.

These are, I think, some amazing facts about water, which is almost everywhere in one form or another. And yet, we rarely pay attention to it, or think about how essential it is to life. We just turn on faucets.

So, I would like you to think a little bit about water today because it is, in some ways, similar to God's grace. We need God's grace to truly live as sons and daughters of God, and it is His grace which upholds the life of the world. It is grace that washes away guilt, sin and moral weakness, and it is grace that satisfies spiritual thirst, refreshing our minds, hearts and souls. God's grace is cycled through us to show itself in forms of love and service to others, and it inspires us to pray for ourselves and our neighbors, and to worship the Lord in His greatness. Just as water has worn away the Grand Canyon, so also can grace wear away even the hardest of hearts if one will allow that grace to come in. Our own lives would be dry and arid in ways it is hard to imagine if it were not for the grace of God, which first poured over us at our baptisms. Grace is often not noticed nor paid much care or attention just like the water that is piped into our homes. But grace is a real power and energy and favor and help from God, and we should seek it and ask Him for it and rely on it every day.

St. Paul, in today’s letter to Titus, tells us that God has richly poured out His Holy Spirit upon us through Christ our Savior, so if we truly want to live as wealthy people, we need to ask Him for His grace, and use it when He sends it to us.

Why is our society so disturbed and dysfunctional? Why do we see so much craziness, violence, discontent and irrational behavior? Why is our suicide rate climbing every year? It’s because fewer and fewer people are living by grace, but instead are living by their own will and understanding. Without God’s gifts to guide and help us human life does not go very well.

This water here is also a vehicle of grace for those who use it in faith. We prayed last night that it may serve as a protection against evil, for the health of body and soul, for the forgiveness of sins, for strength in good works, for an increase in holiness, for freedom from temptations, for the enlightenment of our minds and for the sanctification of our homes.

Water cannot do those things, but the Lord can do those things through the use of this water. It’s not magic. It’s divine love distributed through water, voda, agua. Let’s turn ourselves once again today to the goodness of Christ our Lord and put ourselves more completely and firmly into His loving hands, because we are all thirsty, and He alone can satisfy.