Benedetto: "As a deer my soul longs"

Listen to Psalm 42

The first verse of the wonderful psalm 42 helps us to undertake the Lenten journey. The image it evokes is both poignant and peaceful. The analogy of the soul thirsting for God with the gazelle in the desert longing  for streams of water, has in itself, in its simplicity, a strong expressive charge. It recalls the natural need of the creature for its Creator and humanity for its God. At the time this psalm was composed, it was much more eloquent as it drew skillfully from the collective imagination of Israel. In our modern society we are much less familiar with wild animals and natural watercourses. However, the everlasting actuality of God’s Word allows for the fact that people still identify with this beautiful biblical scene, and it enables them to pray this psalm by joining that “soul belonging to me” with their own life story.

Holy Scripture often refers to the thirst that only God is able to quench. It is a spiritual thirst, a continuous inner restlessness finding its peace only when the heart rests in God (according to Saint Augustine‘s famous maxim). Any attempt to quench this thirst with something else is superfluous, just like Jesus himself teaches the Samaritan woman at the well: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”(John 4, 13-14).

In the desert, thirst increases with the dryness and the pitiless heat of the sun beats down making you feel really poor and needy. Lent has always been associated with the image of the desert: the condition of soul into which we penetrate every year to get the experience of meeting God face to face, like Moses. During these forty long days, recalling the forty years of Israel in the desert, we become aware of our state of being creature, of our natural need for God and we can fathom our conscience to understand if this is always our way of life. Thus, it is necessary to prepare oneself for this meeting and prepare our souls for a greater intimacy with the Lord, to accept, whole-heartedly, the joyful Easter message and enter cheerfully the promised land, which represents the communion with the Father and our brothers and sisters.

Translated into English by Lilia Cardinale