I Thirst 4.18.21
We’ve recently walked through the “Passion Week” narrative and read in the Gospels of the final week of Jesus’ life before His crucifixion. One of his last statements, as He hung on the cross was, “I thirst.” (John 19:28) Initially it appears he is simply talking about physical thirst. A further study, however, shows that this “thirst” is something much deeper and has spiritual implications. It is the thirst of desiring an intimate relationship with you and with me.
This divine “I thirst” echoes throughout the whole of salvation history. Creation itself is God’s thirst to love and be loved. Jesus brings all the threads of God’s thirst together in Himself at Calvary. He desires us and He desires our thirst for Him. Not as an emotional or sentimental response but Jesus desires (thirsts) that we, His creation, might thirst after Him and open ourselves entirely to Him in trust and surrender. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it this way, “my thirst for Him is the only way to satiate His thirst.”
So often, like the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) we tend to satisfy our emptiness and our thirst through temporal and self-satisfying means. Jesus teaches that those who seek love in God, will never lack, be empty or thirst in vain again. Again, quoting Mother Teresa (1993); “my children, once you have experienced the thirst, the love of Jesus for you,, you will never need, you will never thirst for these things which can only lead you away from Jesus, the true and living Fountain.”