He asks for a drink, and he promises a
drink. He is in need, as one hoping to receive, yet he is rich, as one about
to satisfy the thirst of others”
God thirsts to be thirsted for… [Deus sitit sitiri]
On the Cross Jesus said: “I thirst!”
but they didn’t give him what he thirsted for. He thirsted for them, and
they gave him vinegar.
St. Bonaventure:
Indeed in Jesus is revealed
precisely God’s thirst to pour forth life. He thirsts, not out of lack, but
out of superabundance. The love of God by nature is effusive of itself.[4]
St. Thomas Aquinas:
If Jesus says I thirst it is
first of all because he is dying a true death, not only in appearance (lit
“a shadow of death”). Here as well we see his ardent desire for the
salvation of the human race, according to the words of St Paul: God our
Savoir wishes all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth…
(1Tm 2:3-4) Jesus himself said that the Son of Man had come to seek out and
save that which was lost (Lk 9:10). Now, the vehemence of this desire is
clearly expressed with his thirst, as the psalmist says “My soul is
thirsting for the living God.[5]
St. Robert Bellarmine:
Our Lord seems to me to have
said, “I thirst,” in the same sense as that in which he addressed the
Samaritan woman, “Give me to drink.” For when he unfolded the mystery
contained in these words, he added, “If you but knew the gift of God, and
who it is that says to you, Give me to drink, you would have asked of him,
and he would have given you living water.” Now, how could he thirst who is
the fount of living water? Does he not refer to himself in saying, “If any
man thirst, let him come to me and drink?” (Jn 7:37). And is he not that
rock of which the Apostle speaks: “And they drank of the spiritual rock
which followed them, and the rock was Christ?” (1 Cor 10:4). In fine, is it
not he who addresses the Jews by the mouth of Jeremiah the Prophet: “They
have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have dug themselves
cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water?” (Jer 2:13). It seems to
me, then, that our Lord from the Cross, as from a high throne, casts a look
over the whole world, which is full of men who are athirst and fainting from
exhaustion, and by reason of His parched state he pities the drought which
mankind endures, and cries aloud, “I thirst,” that is, I am thirsty on
account of the dried and arid state of my Body, but this thirst will quickly
end. The thirst however, that I suffer from my desire that men should begin
by faith to know that I am the true fount of living water, should come to me
and drink, that they may not thirst for ever, is incomparably greater.[6]
St. Catherine of Siena:
Oh sweetest, boundless, beloved
charity! It was your infinite hunger and thirst for our salvation that made
you cry out that you where thirsty! Though your agony there caused you
intense physical thirst, you thirst for our salvation was greater. Ah, ah
me! There is no one to give you anything to drink except the bitterness of
sin upon sin! How few there are who give you a drink freely and with pure
loving affection![7]
There [on the Cross] they [the
saints] found the Lamb slain such a fire of love for our salvation,
seemingly insatiable. He even cries aloud that he is thirsty, as if to say:
I have more Zeal, thirst, desire for your salvation than I can show you with
this finite suffering.[8]
There [on the Cross] we find the
Lamb slain and opened up for us with such hungry desire for the Father’s
honor and our salvation that seems he cannot effectively show by his bodily
suffering alone all that he long to give. It seems this is what he meant
when he cried out on the Cross, ‘I am thirsty!’ as if to say, ?I have great
a thirst for your salvation that I cannot satisfy it; give me to drink!’ The
gentle Jesus was asking to drink those he saw not sharing in the redemption
purchased by his blood, but he was given nothing to drink but bitterness.
Ah, dearest, not only at the time of the Crucifixion, but later and even now
we continue to see him asking for this kind of drink and showing us that his
thirst persist. It seems to me that people give him nothing but bitterness
and the stench of sin.[9]
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T he last witness among Doctors of
the Church is from her whom Mother Teresa looked to as personal patroness,
from whom she took her name, and with whom she spiritually identified at
many levels, St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
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St. Thérèse’s experience of His
thirst occurred on a Sunday as she gazed on a picture of Jesus Crucified.
Years later she would write that the cry of Jesus’ Thirst had penetrated her
soul in that moment, and that the words “I Thirst” had:
set aflame in me a lively and unknown
ardour . . . I wanted to satiate my Beloved, and I felt myself devoured by
His same thirst for souls… I seemed to hear Jesus saying to me as to the
Samaritan: ‘Give Me to drink’; and the more I gave Him to drink the more the
thirst of my soul grew.[10]
Jesus doesn’t need our work,” she
writes, “but only our love, for this same God is not afraid to beg a bit of
water from the Samaritan. He thirsted ... but in saying ‘Give Me to drink’
it was the love of His poor creature that the Creator of the universe was
asking. He thirsted for love.[11]
The witness of Saints and Servants
of God to the spiritual significance of the thirst of Jesus is actually more
vast and varied than might be imagined, though too numerous to investigate
here.[12]
As important as this theme has been to any of these exponents of the
tradition, however, in none of them has it been as central and as developed
as in Mother Teresa.
