Holy Despair

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I am offering this Rosary for all our listeners to despair. Yes, my prayer for you is that you despair!

Despair is the feeling that prompts a person to give up.

Sinful despair prompts us to give up on God.

Holy Despair is the beginning of salvation when it prompts us to give up our pursuit of worldly contentment, of trying to satisfy our desire for ultimate happiness in the things of this world.

Today I share a story of a woman who tried to find her happiness in everything but God and always came up empty, thirsty. Until she met Jesus. Then she despaired, she quit seeking her happiness through acquisition of things in this world and set all her hope for happiness in Jesus. This is what I want for me and you – Holy Despair.

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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 do not speak to Samaritans. 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 the Holy Trinity placed in our soul that becomes a fountain of divine life flowing through our being to transform us from mere humans to sons and daughters of God, not just in a figure of speech but in our very being. To become like God.

We receive it at Baptism. We can destroy it by mortal sin. It can only be restored by Confession. And it is increased with each Eucharist we receive. God is the Living Water!

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

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

What do we do when we have achieved what we have been pursuing all our life? We have it, yet, we thirst for more. There must be more…

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“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. She begins to want, to long for God.

Yet something is blocking the flow of the Living Water.

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

That is what blocks the Living Water in us. We think our identity, our worth, our happiness will be found in some thing in this world.

What is that blockage for you?

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“Photina put down her water jar…”

This is the moment of holy despair. This is the moment when Photina decides to quit seeking her worth and ultimate happiness in the things of this world alone and she begins to seek them in God alone.

What water jar are you still holding on to? What is it that you think if you will achieve or possess your will find your identity and contentment? It wont work. Put down your jar.

As long as we think we can get ourselves to a place here in this world where we will be happy and content, we will always be frustrated.

Despair is the beginning of salvation. It keeps us hungering, thirsty and seeking union with God as our ultimate happiness.

There are three false ways of dealing with despair:

You can try to live with it – just accept that this world is as good as it gets and don’t hunger or look for more.

You could kill yourself

You try to find a new false hope. Some expectation that happiness will come from the acquisition of some worldly thing.

There is only one true way of dealing with despair.

Put your jar down. Stop trying to quench your thirst for an identity or contentment in worldly things. Start seeking it in God.