by Ottavio De Bertolis

To understand this beautiful invocation, we must go to the Old Testament, and to be precise to the prophet Ezekiel. You will all remember that in chap. 47 we have a very significant vision: «[The angel] led me to the entrance of the temple and I saw that under the threshold of the temple water was coming out towards the east [...] from the right side [...] then he made me cross that water: I it reached my ankle [...] then [...] it reached my hips [...] the waters had risen, they were navigable waters, a river that could not be crossed" (Ez 47, 1-5).

A raging river, ever deeper, comes out of the temple, first a trickle, then more and more overwhelming. The prophet continues: «every living being that moves wherever the river reaches will live; the fish will be very abundant there, because those waters where they reach heal, and where the torrent reaches, everything will revive" (Ez 47, 9).

Saint John, in painting the scene of the piercing of the Savior's side, certainly has this page from Ezekiel in mind; in fact, he sees blood and water coming out of the Lord's side. This living water is precisely that of which it is said: "wherever the waters reach they heal, and where the torrent reaches, everything will live again", and the word of the Old Testament is therefore fulfilled in the revelation that takes place on the Cross. Jesus is therefore the temple of God, the true one, from whose threshold the healing waters flow. In fact, the evangelist John himself tells us, in a different context, about the expulsion of the money changers from the Temple: «Then the Jews spoke up and said to him: “What sign do you show us to do these things?”. Jesus answered them: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again." The Jews then said to him: "This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up again in three days?" But he spoke of the temple of his body" (Jn 2, 18-21).

Jesus is the temple, built by the Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother, that temple from whose door, opened by the blow of the spear, living water flows. All believers are then compared to lush trees along that stream, each blessed with special gifts. Again in Ezekiel we find: «Along the river, on one bank and on the other, all kinds of fruit trees will grow, whose branches will not wither: their fruit will not cease and every month they will ripen, because their waters flow from the sanctuary» . The same image is repeated in the Apocalypse, which describes the holy city in these terms: «He then showed me a river of living water, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and from the Lamb. In the middle of the city square and on both sides of the river there is a tree of life that yields twelve harvests and produces fruit every month" (Rev 22, 1-2). Again, at the center of John's contemplation, there is the slain Lamb, living source of the Spirit. 

Thus the Psalm is fulfilled: "A river and its streams make the city of God gladden, the holy abode of the Most High" (Ps 46, 5-6). The Church is continually enlivened by living water, the gift of the Risen One, which dwells in her as in his temple. Temple of God is Christ, temple of God is the Church, temple of God is our bodies: in Christ, in the Church, in us, the life-giving Spirit dwells. Jesus pours it out abundantly for us in his Passion and Resurrection.