The Fountain of Life

“With you, O Lord, is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light.” Psalm 36

You may have read this Psalm many times over the years, but have you paused to question the last six words in the quote above? What exactly is David conveying in his use of the repeated word “light”?

We begin by pondering the notion of divine light, as that is the context of the first usage. We learn in Revelation 21:23 that this light is the quintessence of God’s radiance, and that the Lamb, that is, Christ, is the source of its Lamp.

During her daily prayers, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) frequently fell into ecstasy and was often seen surrounded by a divine light. This penetration of celestial light was what lit her soul and led to her innumerable mystical experiences, about which she wrote in her seminal works, her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus, and The Interior Castle.

The more deeply we immerse ourselves in contemplation of our Lord, the more manifest our understanding becomes that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5). It is that light that bathes our souls during struggles that sap our spiritual energy, and it ameliorates our pain and illuminates the path forward. In his spiritually informed work, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John of the Cross wrote:

Faith… brings us to believe divinely revealed truths which transcend every natural light and infinitely exceed all human understanding…

Again, we see the two planes of understanding: our mundane, temporal level is the source of “natural light,” while the elevated plane is where our contemplative prayer can result in “divinely revealed truths.” While we need the former, our souls are fed by the latter.

It is not fortuitous that David coupled “life” and “light” in this Psalm, because the meaning is twofold: as discussed, the light from our Sun is the source of our life in the temporal world, but the spiritual light that breathes life into our soul is what animates our mystical life. It is that light that sustains us in mysterious ways that beguile the intellect but makes the heart smile.

Although darkness is not explored in this Psalm, David describes the influence it has in the opening lines:

Sin directs the heart of the wicked man;
his eyes are closed to the fear of God.
For he lives with the delusion:
his guilt will not be known and hated.
Empty and false are the words of his mouth;
he has ceased to be wise and do good.
On his bed he hatches plots;
he sets out on a wicked way;
he does not reject evil.

We can intuitively discern that the darkness that concerns David is the “darkened foolish heart” (Romans 1:21) of “the wicked” whose mind “the god of this world has blinded” to keep him from seeing God’s light (2 Corinthians 4:3). The depth of this darkness is so inky black that it admits absolutely no spiritual light whatsoever.

The hideousness of that darkness is exquisitely described by Jesus in Matthew 6:22-23:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

This darkness is compounded by its duplicity, for it insidiously convinces us that it is, in truth, light. This, of course, is the work of the Evil One, whose alluring velvet touch masks a malevolence unparalleled in the universe.

It is the light of the Lord that overcomes the darkness, and His light is what lights our spiritual path with a brightness lit by faith, as we know in John 8:12:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

To deepen this spiritual delight, in His light, we not only see light, we become “light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8) and therefore become ourselves “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). We can now see a pattern emerging, and the Lord’s “Fountain of Life” is a limitless source of strength gifted to us, His unworthy servants, to hasten us on our earthly pilgrimage, whose ultimate goal is eternal salvation.

In every respect, we can be assured of knowing that, despite our unavoidable trials and tribulations, deeply embedded in our souls is that spiritual luminescence that softens the “whips and scorns of time” in the temporal world. It is truly “a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

Philip E. Mella