There was a river in the Garden of Eden. Genesis says it “flowed out of Eden to water the Garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.” It even names these smaller rivers: the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. They made everything grow. They nourished the animals. Remember, too, how everything was created: “Darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters…. God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters’” (Gen 1:2, 6). In the biblical worldview, these waters ― the “great deep” ― were primordial. They’re the beginning, the first thing.
After Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden, their desire was to get back, especially to its waters. They wanted to get back and to eat from the Tree of Life, which was nourished by these waters, and would, the text says, make them live forever (Gen 3:22). In a sense, all us ancestors of Adam and Eve have been searching for the way back to the waters of Eden. This is one of the hidden themes of the Book of Genesis. If you read closely, you’ll notice the characters in Genesis ― the original patriarchs ― always thirsting. “We find the patriarchs constantly digging wells,” one of the Church Fathers noticed.1 Knowing of no way to Eden, it’s as if the ancients tried to dig Eden’s waters up from the earth.
We are like the patriarchs. We search for water, often in the wrong places. When Jesus was in Samaria, there was a woman near a well built by the patriarch Jacob. “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again,” he told her. “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst” (Jn 4:13-14). Jesus possesses that water from the great deep, that water from Eden that becomes in us “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). That is the water he wants for us: “Put out into the deep water,” he told the apostles, climbing into their boat (Lk 5:4).
It is this deep water we’re groping for when we reach into the holy water font. Holy water, of course, is just simple water blessed by a bishop or priest. It is not water from Eden. We cannot get back to Eden. It is not the water Jesus gives by which we will never thirst. But holy water is an icon of those deep waters for which the patriarchs frantically dug. It is, perhaps, water “downstream” from Eden.
Remember: water is primordial ― it’s the first thing. The world began with water. Eden was nourished by it. So the first thing we do at Mass is sprinkle ourselves with it. For Christians, it’s a reminder of our baptism. Water was dripped across us when we first became Christians, and so water is dripped across us in the Sign of the Cross when we first enter to pray. First things must be done first. And now, with the first thing done, we can begin.
Origen, Homilies on Genesis 13. Cited in Jean Corbon, The Wellspring of Worship, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 21. The central image of Corbon’s book — the “wellspring” — partly inspires my own reflection here.
So, from the sounds of his words, these waters are something that Jesus is truly 'offering' to people; so is he saying that if they (the people) believe in him and his word that they will, through his sacrifice, be allowed into the kingdom of God, where the waters truly flow still. Or is he referring to the blood of Christ, being a much more real physical manifestation of the waters of Eden than we could ever duplicate with holy water? Or is it something else altogether?