Holy Despair

One

The Woman at the Well and Holy Despair 

I am offering this Rosary for you. My prayer for you is that you despair!

There are virtues and vices and then there is something completely different, there are feelings. Virtues and vices are choices. Feelings just spring up from our emotions. 

The virtue of hope is the decision to strive after Jesus and Heaven as our ultimate happiness. The vice of despair is the decision not to strive for Heaven. But there is also the feeling of hope and the feeling of despair.

Hope as a feeling prompts you to keep trying. Despair as a feeling prompts you to give up. The feeling of hope should prompt us to always keep striving for a deeper more meaningful relationship with Jesus. The feeling of despair should prompt us to give up, to stop trying to find our identity, self-worth, and ultimate happiness in anything other than Jesus. 

This is why I want you to despair. I want both you and I to give up trying to find our ultimate satisfaction in anything but Jesus. 

Two

Jesus came to Nablus in Samaria, to Jacob’s Well. 

There he met a Samaritan woman. From Tradition we know her name, Photina. Jesus asks her for a drink of water, and she is surprised because Jews thought Samaritans were less than human. 

Jesus replied, “If you only knew what God is offering…you would have been the one to ask and he would have given you living water.”

What is this Living Water? It is God! The One thing, the Ultimate thing that can quench our thirst for happiness. 

Psalm 36:8-9 says, “They will be inebriated with the richness of Your house O God; and You will let them drink from the torrent of Your pleasure. For You are the Fountain of Living Water.”

Three

Looking at the well, Jesus said to Photina, “Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again.”

Nothing in this world can quench our thirst for perfect and everlasting happiness. In fact, the good things of this world can at best give only partial and temporary happiness. Eventually, they will always leave us empty. Thirsting for more. 

So, what do we do when we have achieved what we have been pursuing all our lives? We have it, yet, we thirst for more. Now what do we do?

Four

“Sir,” Photina speaks now, her heart bursting with a longing. “Give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty again.”

The most important thing happens in Photina. She admits she is not perfectly happy. And she begins to desire God above all things. She begins to want God more than anything else. Yet something is blocking the flow of the Living Water into her soul.

Up to this time she thought her identity, self-worth, and happiness would be found in being desired and loved by a man. In fact, she has had five husbands. None of them satisfied. 

At every moment God wants to flood our soul with the Living Water. But we too have blockages. We have things that we want more than God. The things we are convinced will really make us happy. We think our identity, self-worth, safety, and our happiness will be found in something other than God. 

What is that blockage for you?

Five

“Photina put down her water jar…”

This is the most important moment in the life of Photina! This is the moment of holy despair. 

This is the moment when the feeling of despair, the feeling to quit seeking her ultimate happiness in this world prompts her to make a decision, to put down her jar, to quit seeking her happiness in the things of this world and pursue Jesus with all her heart. 

What water jar are you still holding on to? It won’t work. When are you going to put down your jar?