Through Her Flows the Pool of Life
[Based on the Feast of the Theotokos, Life-giving Font, Eastern Rite Churches,
Friday after Easter, remembering Christ’s continual Life-giving]

by Virginia M. Kimball, S.T.D.

A dying man, wasting away to death,

spent with  fever and horrible thirst,

calling desperately out for help …

stumbled alone,  forgotten and sick

outside the empire’s grandest place,

thirsting itself for signs of hope

for Christ’s promised healing grace.

It was then young, healthy Makellis,

future emperor of  this metropolis,

came upon the languishing man …

searched in vain to find him drink,

when he heard a woman’s gentle voice

calling and calling to a tiny pool,

where he washed the poor man

racked in pain … and a miracle happened

and healing came. Who was that woman

whose voice he heard, some sixteen

hundred years ago? It must have been

the mother of Christ, the one through ages

who holds God’s Son, distributes God’s love -

a source of life, a river flowing from above,

the Virgin, source of the Source, embracing Life, 

mother giving life, her Son the faithful

struggling on, she the “fountain of the Fountain.”

The gift this Friday in the mother remains,

pouring Water of Life on us like Spring rains.

For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
 and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. ^{Revelation 7:17}