THE OUR FATHER - Dominican Nuns Ireland

With a last wave of his hand the old fisherman pushed the boat away from the quay, then he called out to me in his native Gaelic: “May God give you to drink from the Well of the Trinity”. The blessing fell on me like dew and conjured up the well –  an image that had much meaning for me.

In the Bible wells are places where many people meet their destiny – from the young dreamer Joseph who was thrown into a well in treachery on through the other well scenes. It was at the well of his uncle Laban that Jacob found the young Rachael and fell in love with her. In the Song of Songs the bride is compared to a ‘garden fountain, a well of living water” (S 4:15). But it was of the well of Sycar where Jesus met the Samaritan woman that I thought when the old fisherman gave me the ‘Well of the Trinity blessing’. Seated by the well, ‘wearied by his journey’ Jesus told about the inner well at the source of our being. “The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up with eternal life” Jn 4.

Searching for that inner spring is one way of going deeply into prayer. It helps if one thinks of going down the steps of a well to reach the water. In one of H.V. Morton’s books on the Holy Land he describes an ancient well covered with masonry. This well has 24 steps leading down into the cool darkness to where the pure water gushes out of the rock, clean and cold. The image suggests the well of the Trinity and the call within, that St Ignatius of Antioch was aware of when he spoke of “a murmur of living water that whispers within me ‘Come to the Father'”.

In the Lord’s Prayer there is a very concise set of steps that lead to the Father. The ‘Our Father’ starts with our Father in Heaven and goes on to the last cry ‘deliver us from evil’. If one takes it, beginning with the ‘deliver us’ cry as the first step, it is quite amazing how each petition leads in step by step to the Father.

The last three steps are quiet and peaceful and have a Trinitarian dimension.

God has many names. Islam calls Him by ninety names. The Mighty, the Invisible, the Glorified, the Majestic, all full of fear and reverence and wonder. It was the only Son who has taught us to call Him ‘Father”. “Father who art in heaven”. In the heaven of my soul – the wonder of it! My Father!

It is Jesus who gives us the image of the ‘secret place’. He also gives us the image of the spring of water within welling up with eternal life.(Jn 4:7).

He gives us the ‘Our Father’ as a way to that place. But when I get there (if I don’t get hung up like Alice on some interesting digression!) there are no more images. He says “Be still and know that I am God”. Here “what is most needed is to be silent before the great God with the desire and with the tongue, for the language He best hears is the silent language of love.” (St John of the Cross).