Jul 12: Out of the Water

Sébastien Bourdon: The Finding of Moses
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1650

Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading I: Ex 2:1-15a

Pharoah’s daughter named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water (NRSV, Ex 2:10b).”

Father, because it is such an ambivalent reality that speaks to us of both death and life, water has come to symbolize for us our encounter with you at every moment, called as we are to die to ourselves to be born more fully in you.

That is why, when you called your people out of the slavery in Egypt into new life, they remembered that deliverance in terms of a passage through the sea. They told the story as well of how Moses had been rescued from death in the Nile to lead your people to freedom.

The River Jordan too took on great significance as your people hopefully left their rebellious selves in the desert to enter upon the land which they understood as their destiny. John recalled all of this when he summoned the people once again to pass through the Jordan in renouncing their sinfulness.

But, most of all, Father, it is in the waters of baptism that we effectively celebrate our union with Jesus in his death and resurrection and our summons in every moment to die to self and to be reborn.

Father, may we live every moment as one symbolized by watery death and rebirth. In every moment may we grow in you.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.