Lectio Divina — Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Day 4 of the Season of Creation
taken
1. Lectio — Reading
> “But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.”
— Luke 5:35
There is something unsettling about taken.
Jesus speaks of a presence that will become an absence. The Bridegroom is with the disciples now, and therefore this is a time for rejoicing. But the day will come when he is taken from them. Then their absence will become fasting—the emptiness itself teaching them what they once possessed.
Perhaps that is one reason fasting matters. By voluntarily going without something good, I learn again that a gift is a gift. Hunger reminds me that food should never be taken for granted. Thirst reminds me that water should never be taken for granted.
And during this Season of Creation, taken confronts me with another question:
How much can I take from creation before something precious is taken from me?
Water seems inexhaustible when I turn a faucet and it appears. But the water beneath the Texas Panhandle is not infinite. If I continue thinking only about what I am entitled to take today, I may help create a tomorrow in which others discover what has been taken from them.
Perhaps ecological conversion begins when I stop asking only, “How much may I take?” and begin asking, “How much should I leave?”
[Luke 5:33–39 — USCCB](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/5?33=&utm_source=chatgpt.com)
2. Meditatio — Meditation
I love watching the turkeys at The Glenn go about their day.
They forage. They scratch. They wander from place to place looking for something edible. They seem wonderfully unconcerned about tomorrow. They do not appear to worry about aquifers, rainfall totals, groundwater policy or what the Texas Panhandle might look like decades from now.
There is something attractive about that freedom.
But I wonder whether it is good for me.
The Ogallala Aquifer beneath this region has sustained farms, ranches, communities and families, yet groundwater has been taken from parts of it far faster than nature can replenish it. In portions of the southern High Plains, the consequences are already severe.
At The Glenn, I can turn on the water and easily forget where it came from.
The turkey can be excused for that.
I cannot.
I possess knowledge that the turkey does not possess, and knowledge brings responsibility.
That makes the word taken particularly powerful for me today. Every gallon pumped from underground has been taken from somewhere. That does not make using water wrong. Water exists to sustain life. But the Christian understanding of creation challenges the assumption that because something is available for me to take, I therefore have an unlimited right to take it.
What if my fasting during this Season of Creation included water?
Not fasting from drinking water, of course, but fasting from unnecessary consumption of it.
Could I pay closer attention to irrigation? Could I reconsider what needs watering and what does not? Could I capture more rainwater? Could I choose plants and practices better suited to this dry place? Could I simply become conscious of the extraordinary gift flowing from the faucet each time I turn it?
The point would not merely be reducing a number on a water meter.
It would be learning gratitude.
The Bridegroom’s being taken teaches the disciples to recognize the gift of his presence. Perhaps the possibility of water being taken from future generations should teach me to recognize the gift while it is still here.
So when I watch the turkeys today, I can admire their simplicity without imitating their unawareness.
They can forage without worrying about the Ogallala.
I have been given the capacity to know what is happening—and therefore the responsibility to care.
The question for Day 4 of this Season of Creation becomes:
Will I live as though water will always be there for the taking, or will I receive it as a gift that must also be left for others?
3. Oratio — Prayer
Creator God, forgive me for the gifts I have taken for granted.
Teach me to receive water with gratitude, use it with restraint and protect it for those who come after me. May my fasting lead me from taking without thought to caring with love.
Amen.
4. Contemplatio — Contemplation
Taken.
At first, the digital power described in Magnifica humanitas may seem far removed from groundwater beneath The Glenn.
But perhaps the connection is precisely the question of taking.
Who has the power to take?
Who receives the benefits?
Who bears the consequences?
And who gets to decide?
Catholic Social Doctrine gives me criteria for answering those questions: human dignity, the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice.
Those principles apply whether I am considering water beneath the High Plains or data moving through an artificial-intelligence system.
The universal destination of goods particularly challenges me today. Water may be pumped through my well and used on my property, but ultimately water is not simply mine. Creation precedes me. I received it from people who came before me, and people who have not yet been born have a claim upon the conditions necessary for their flourishing.
The same discernment must accompany technology.
Artificial intelligence gives humanity extraordinary power to extract, collect, predict, automate and control. But more power to take does not create a greater right to take.
Can technology help me understand groundwater better? Certainly.
Can sensors help me use less water? Yes.
Can artificial intelligence help farmers and ranchers make better decisions about irrigation, weather, soil and grazing? Potentially.
But the decisive question remains human:
What is all this power for?
Yesterday, Perezvon helped me contemplate purpose. Today, the Ogallala forces me to apply that question to what I take from creation.
If technology merely helps me extract a diminishing resource more efficiently, I have not necessarily become wiser. I may simply have become better at taking.
But if technology helps me understand limits, conserve what I have received, share resources more justly and preserve possibilities for generations I will never meet, then technology can serve the common good.
And perhaps that is where today’s Gospel and the Season of Creation meet.
Jesus speaks about the pain of something precious being taken away.
The Christian response is not despair.
It is conversion.
I do not want to wait until a well runs dry to discover that water was sacred.
I do not want absence to be the thing that finally teaches me gratitude.
And I do not want those who come after me to look upon a depleted aquifer and ask why my generation understood what was happening yet continued taking as though nothing could ever be taken away.
Today, when I turn on the faucet, I want to remember:
This water is not simply something I have taken from the earth.
It is something I have received from God,
shared with my neighbor,
borrowed from creation,
and entrusted to me for those who have not yet come.
That is something even the carefree turkeys at The Glenn can help me remember.
Day 4 of the Season of Creation on Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
