In today’s Gospel for the feast of Pentecost, we hear Jesus Christ speaking about the coming of the Holy Spirit. After having told his disciples that He would be leaving them, He stood and cried: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me! Let anyone who believes in me come and drink!” And He added: “From his heart shall flow streams of living water.”
Saint John tells us that Christ was referring here to the Holy Spirit, who was to come upon His disciples after His Ascension. The Old Testament Scriptures are full of references to water and its power to both destroy and to save. Likewise, Jesus uses the imagery of water to refer to our spiritual thirst, which can only be satisfied in Him. On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman we saw how He describes Himself as the Living Water.
But the imagery of Living Water is also applied to the Holy Spirit. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem tells us that the “streams of living water” that Christ tells us will flow out of our hearts “are not rivers perceived by sense that merely water the earth with its thorns and trees. But these are rivers that bring souls to the light.”
The Holy Spirit can be referred to as water, because of what He does for us. Saint Cyril continues:
“And why did He call the grace of the Spirit water? Because by water all things subsist; because water brings forth grass and living things; because the water of the rain showers down from heaven; because it comes down in one form but works in many forms. … And so the Holy Spirit also, being one, and of one nature and indivisible, distributes to each His grace as He wills. And as the dry tree, after being nourished with water, puts forth shoots, so also the soul in sin, when it has been through repentance made worthy of the Holy Spirit, brings forth clusters of righteousness. And though He is one in nature, yet many are the virtues He inculcates by the will of God and in the name of Christ.”