Stagnant Water, Stagnant Love: Keep It Flowing

If your brother listens to you,
you have won him over.

When I was growing up in Ireland,
you would turn on the tap and have water,
just like you guys do, right?
The difference is, in Ireland, there is no bill.
Water is free.
Never charged for it.

They tried, in 2014, after I immigrated.
A new government came in, they needed to balance the budget,
and they started to install water meters
and started to charge for water.
Wow! Talk about getting the Irish up!

There were hundreds of thousands of people protesting
in every city throughout the country.
Of course, two years later, the charges were removed
and we are back to the original.
You have to understand,
in Ireland, it kind of rains a lot!

The idea that you charge for what comes from the sky
is sort of absurd.
It does not make any sense to us.
Now, it is not that we are completely stubborn,
although we are.
It is not that we do not understand
that we need to gather the water and pipe it,
and they do have some industrial charges
for people who use so much water.
So they do have that.

It is just that it violated the sensibilities
that water came to us free.
Therefore, we cannot charge for it,
especially the poor.
So the infrastructure is paid for
out of what we call the exchequer, the general taxes.
So that is how we get the water.

It is funny, you do not realize how precious water is
until you do not have it.
I remember on a mission trip to Nicaragua.
One of the reasons we went to Nicaragua
is that we helped dig a super deep well,
and then we piped water into these houses.
Once the house gets water with a tap on it,
somehow it turns into a home.
It is no longer just a house.
It is a home.
When you have running water,
there is something very special about it.

The same is true when we go to Tijuana.
We build this house, but it is really not a home
until that tap water is connected.
Then, once that tap water is on,
something about their house now becomes a home.
Running water.

Every time I come back from one of those mission trips,
I turn on the water at the faucet here,
and I pause for a moment.
I realize, wow, this is such a precious gift.
Running water.
We take it for granted.
You stand underneath that shower,
and you just realize, this is a gift.
And not everyone has it.

In fact, in the whole world, there are over 2.2 billion people
who do not have access to running water.
2.2 billion people.
That is a lot of people who do not have access to running water.

Today, this weekend,
we begin here to celebrate the Season of Creation.
We go all the way till October 4th,
the celebration of St. Francis' feast day.
Throughout the whole world,
all Christian communities, including the Catholic Church,
celebrate this theme, this year, of “living water.”
That is why we have the water flowing right here.
We have a reminder of the fruitfulness of it,
with fruit showing that water brings about great fruit.

But the theme of “living water,”
comes from the same prophet
we heard in today's first reading, the prophet Ezekiel.
The image comes from the living water flowing from the temple.
It starts out as a trickle.
It then ends up as a large river
that a person cannot even wade across.

When you look at the translation,
that word living water in the Hebrew,
it translates as living water,
but it really translates as water that is moving.
See, it is not just that it gives life,
but why it gives life is because the water moves
and stays fresh because it moves.

Water that does not move is a pond.
If it does not move, it does not give life.
In fact, a water that does not have an outlet will be dead water.
There is a place called the Dead Sea.
It is the largest body of water that produces absolutely no life.
The reason why it is called the Dead Sea
is that nothing grows there.
It cannot, because the water is stagnant.
It does not move.

Love is like that.
God's love is like that.
Just like water, we receive God's love.
We do not do anything to earn it.
We do not do anything to be worthy of it.
Our parents, albeit imperfectly, shared that love with us.
We did not do anything to earn that or to be worthy of it.
Our parents showered that love upon us.
But here is the really important part.

Just like the water, if it becomes stagnant,
like a pond within us,
if we hold on to it selfishly, then it becomes stagnant and dead.

We are called, as the Scriptures remind us today,
in particular the second reading,
we are called to love one another.
That is what keeps the water flowing.
That is what keeps it fresh.
That is what allows the fruit to flourish.
You see, we are called to be part of that movement.

Sometimes we forget that we are loved.
The first movement is to receive,
and the second movement is to pass it on.
That is why there is the connection
to the response of today's psalm:
if today you hear the voice of God,
harden not your hearts.
We have to hear it first.

We cannot give what we do not have.
If we do not feel the love and receive the love from God,
then we cannot pass it on, because we have not received it.
So that is the first condition.
If we hear the voice of God,
harden not our hearts.
In other words, receive the love of God.

Then in today's gospel, we hear what happens when love stagnates,
when the water stagnates,
when there is a problem.
He gives us a way to break open the blockage.
Because remember, when we refuse to forgive somebody,
that is stagnated water and the water is dying.
So we are called to forgive.
That is what keeps the love flowing.
That is what keeps the water fresh.

And what does Jesus say today?
It is four steps, very straightforward.
This is not a technique.
This is Jesus telling us what he does.
He says, remember, he loves us first.

He says, if somebody is at odds with you,
you need to go and resolve it.
If that does not work, then bring a second or third person,
and resolve it.
If that does not work, bring the church.
If that does not resolve it, then treat them like you would
a tax collector or a Gentile.

Now, what most people would think
is that means you shun them, kick them out.
Well, no.
Let us see how Jesus treated the tax collector and the Gentile.
He dined with them.
One of them was invited to be his disciple, his apostle.
So the invitation stands.
The water still flows.
The love still goes.
There is no stagnation here for Jesus.
He is inviting us into the same flowing, living water,
to stay fresh.

So what does that mean for us?
We are all in different pews, separated by a couple of feet.
The temptation is to think
we are the only one with troubles in our marriage.
We are the only ones with our children who are being difficult.
We are the only ones having to take care
of our sick parents or relatives.
We are the only ones dealing with the grieving of a loss.
In a sense, no one has quite the same suffering as us.
I get that.
But each of us, in our own different ways,
have stuff to deal with.

Why we come together is to keep the water fresh.
Not to remain in a cistern, separate from each other,
but to share the water in this common pool,
and then let it remain fresh, to pass it on.
That is why we come to receive from the table,
to receive the strength from Christ,
to become Christ, and then to pass it on.

If we do not pass it on, my friends,
it becomes dead.
You have to know this.
Stagnated water is dead water.
Stagnated love is dead love.
We have got to pass it on.
That is the command.
That is the fulfillment of all the commands, he says.
Love our neighbor as ourselves.

So there are two things that we need to remember today.
One, if we hear the voice of God,
harden not our hearts.
We need to hear the voice of God.
We need to feel the love of God.
And if our brother listens to us,
then we have won him over.
We have passed on the love.
We keep the water fresh.
This is living water.
We come to participate and
keep it flowing and living to others.

If your brother listens to you,
you have won him over.