While recent catastrophic flooding in Australia and other parts of the world has reminded us of the ravages that water can wreak, water also has a profoundly sacred quality. Author and teacher Ann Rennie reflects on why for her water is not just holy, but also a symbol of being part of something “mysterious and magisterial”, a great flowing river of time and tradition which looks towards eternity.
But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Amos 5:24.
I believe in the holiness of water. It is the giver of life and the baptismal drenching of initiation and welcome. It is the salty sweat of the brow and the warm wading pool of the womb. It is the vast oceans and small ponds, the rivers and trickles and tributaries that feed the earth. It is the shimmering swathe of soft summer rain and the dancing arabesque jettisoned from old fountains. It is the municipal lake and the foaming crushing rapids of Niagara Falls. It is the slaking of thirst and the cleansing of the body. It is deluge after drought, water into wine, tears of joy. It is the spring of hope.
Almost fifteen years ago I visited Lourdes, a small town in the south of France where, in 1858, a young Bernadette Soubirous experienced eighteen apparitions of the Virgin Mary. After these visitations there appeared a spring at the spot in the grotto where the Virgin had appeared, its gushing a miraculous response to a young girl’s faith. It became a place to come for healing, a place of pilgrimage for the faithful, the curious, the desperate ... and for those who had no faith left.
The faith in which I have happily grown old has been coloured by the stories of saints. Bloody martyrdom and grisly endings competed with mystical manifestations and visitations to fuel the imagination and wonder of this Catholic kid. At school we had a grotto and almost every day of my primary and secondary education I walked past the recreated tableau of this famed Marian apparition. Now, back at said school, I still stop occasionally for a quick prayer, remembering the class of 1931, members, perhaps, of the Children of Mary, whose piety and philanthropy built the grotto. A plain new Bernadette has replaced the one of my school days as the original concrete model was abducted sometime in the early 2000s as a prank. (Getting that back would be a miracle!) I listen to the gentle bubble and burble of recycled water in the recess of the ivy-wreathed cavern, a sound that is calming in the busyness of the school day. And so, Bernadette’s story took hold of me at a young age and for years has nestled somewhere between magic and miracle.
I promised to bring back some Lourdes water for my mother. Perhaps it was her way of keeping the faith or journeying with me - my mother who was so often in conversation with either St. Gerard Majella or St. Jude. There is something reassuring in the cards and crosses and medals, even the garish fridge magnet. They are not simply mementoes of time and place, but small collectables that furnish the faith. They may well be Catholic kitsch, but I love it that dear Papa Francesco beams at me every time I open the freezer.
My own holy water is at the back of a kitchen cupboard in a plastic bottle. I haven’t the heart to throw it out because it holds my memory of that joyful pilgrimage. It is a homely reminder that I am a tiny part of the great flowing river of time and tradition, of continuity and disruption, of looking towards eternity. I am part of something that is the mysterious and magisterial, flawed and often failing, that enduring Christian continuum, that link in the chain of about which St. John Henry Newman writes.
At night I joined the procession, a hobbling, bobbing, wrinkled ribbon of movement following the illuminated statue of Our Lady held aloft in a glass case. Candles in paper lanterns flickered in the human traffic of the able bodied and the infirm, the fit and the feeble. Hymns were sung in a multitude of languages and the Ave Maria rang out clear into the deep purple night under the Pyrenees.
As I walked, I started to weep. My tears mixed with the gentle evening drizzle and I was moved by this crush of humanity. I realised that I was participating in something beautiful, something beyond words, something that joins me with the thousands of others who were gathered in her name. I cried because I saw a tough tattooed Liverpudlian with a green mohawk, tartan skirt and bovver boots cheerfully pushing his sick friend in a wheelchair, keeping his spirits up. I cried because I saw love in action. I cried because I saw faith aflame in the kindness of the able-bodied volunteers who carried the sick with a smile and lowered them into the eddying pools and knew that this service was God’s best work. I cried because I was one amongst many who, for whatever reason, sang and walked and prayed.
As the pilgrims opened their hearts and the crippled came to be cured at the water, I saw a wonderful thing. I witnessed that most human and holy and enduring of miracles - hope.
Ann’s most recent book is Blessed: Meditations on a Life of Small Wonders, published by Laneway Press, Melbourne. Available on Kindle. See:
https://lanewaypress.com.au/blog/portfolio/blessed-meditations-on-a-life-of-small-wonders/