The WORD in LENT - Third week, Monday
March 13, 2023: 2 Kings 5: 1-5; Luke 4: 24-30
The theme introduced by the Word yesterday, the third Sunday, carries on today! We see that in the responsorial psalm that we prayed, which connects the Word to the liturgy. Peace is thirsting - thirsting for God, thirsting for God experience, thirsting for the spiritual wellbeing. How is spiritual thirst and spiritual wellbeing correlated - that is what is explained by the readings today!
There can be three categories of persons based on the three typologies of attitudes that they manifest, regarding a spiritual good that they are proposed with. The first category are those who have actually no thirst! They feel fulfilled, complete, saturated and self-sufficient. Like those who have no thirst, even if they have a bottle of purest water they can imagine, would only look and stare at it, so would these! This is the complaint of Jesus against his own people: they were so used to him that they could not see the Son of God in him!
The second category is of those persons who have a thirst, but it is not the most essential need at the moment. They can manage their thirst, or stifle their need for a drink, because they have many other things that matter more to them. It refers to persons to whom the other things like the ego, the success, the need to show themselves as powerful before the world, the selfish and childish interests, matter much more than any spiritual need! They can pass by a spiritual need offered to them, until a point when they would realise what they missed and then they would regret about it. Naman was one such, but luckily his servant girl saved him from the folly.
The third category is of those persons who have an overwhelming thirst for the Spirit. They value this thirst as the uppermost in their life and they would do anything to address that need! These are persons of the Reign who would prioritise their spiritual thirst and thus have that spiritual experience of God, that peace that God alone can give! There is no stopping them... they will have their peace, because peace is thirsting, thirsting for God, for God-experience.