A Water Fight With God
By Fr. John Roderick, F.S.C.B.
June, 2023
A few summers ago, while I was part of our house in Columbia, I had the opportunity to visit our mission in Broomfield, Colorado where I spent a few weeks with our priests and helped in the parish with Masses and confessions. I arrived during the week of the Totus Tuus summer camp which is a proposal of Christian friendship for school aged students. The camp was organized and run by university students from various parts of the United States.
During this week, my primary responsibility was to hear confessions and preach during the daily Mass for the camp. I was also asked to share my witness and to help in an evening of apologetics, which was a dialogue with the high school students about the questions they had about the Catholic faith. I also really enjoyed the free time, the moments of theater and singing, and especially the lunches where I was able to meet many of the young people of the parish. The possibility of sharing the mission of my brothers filled me with great joy.
On the morning of the last day of the camp, I saw the young children arrive with water guns of various sizes and colors, buckets to throw water, and soon to be filled water balloons. I quickly discovered the tradition of the end of the week “water fight.” Everyone was really excited and prepared for the day!
Observing everything that was taking place at the entrance of the church, there was born in me an idea to comment on this experience in the homily at Mass. After the gospel reading, I approached the ambo with a big desire to touch the hearts of my new young friends. I began by commenting that I was struck seeing the joy and excitement in the faces of the young people when they arrived at the parish with their “weapons” for the afternoon water fight. “Our God is very happy to see the passion and desire with which you arrived at the parish this morning. God, our Father, has this same desire and passion to be with us every day,” I continued. Then, I shared that God loves water fights, too! Immediately, I got the attention of all the young people and the adults. To avoid any misunderstandings, I explained that what I was going to preach about was an analogy and that it should not be taken literally.
I told them that God also has a super soaker water gun and that it is the best one ever made. God's super soaker is the best that has ever existed because its liquid never runs out. Everyone followed my words with great interest. I asked them: “Do you like to get squirted in the water fight?” Everyone said, “No!” I explained to them that, unlike a traditional water fight, ideally, during the water fight with our heavenly Father, we are supposed to get soaked by the water that God directs our way. I kept prompting: “What do you think God has inside his super soaker? What infinite and limitless liquid does his superpowerful weapon have inside?” A few of the children immediately raised their hands. The first young boy answered: “God probably has Holy Water in his super soaker.” I replied: “That’s a beautiful answer, but it's not quite the right one.” The next one said: “Father, maybe God has the consecrated wine of the Mass in his super soaker?” I said: “No, that’s not the answer I'm looking for, that would be pretty cool, but you’re getting closer. I'm going to give you the answer,” I said. “God has loaded in his super soaker an infinite amount of His Love. Every day our Father in heaven sees us and wants to squirt us with his love, he wants to shower us and bathe us with his infinite affection and mercy. The secret of life is to learn to never flee and run away from his ‘squirts’ of love, but allow oneself to be totally drenched and bathed by his mercy.”
At the end of Mass, when I was waiting at the exit of the Church to greet my new friends, many came over to invite me to the water fight. Several of my new friends told me: “Father, after lunch, we are going to soak you with a lot of love water!” I was thrilled to be able to share and convey the desire to let myself be bathed by the Father's love and mercy.
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Photo by Nativity of Our Lord Parish and School
