An exegesis of the papal Magisterium emphasizes that Jesus’ thirst is a thirst to give, to unleash the living waters upon humanity. Hence, in the eyes of the Church, this thirst is not indicating primarily a human lack or neediness in the God-man, but superabundance, a fullness of divine love that Jesus yearns to pour forth upon humanity.

 The Magisterial references to Jesus’ thirst are few and quite recent, principally from John Paul II in 1988, 1989, 1993, and 2002, and significantly, from the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. They are concise and to the point, touching both the revelatory and redemptive purpose of Jesus’ expression of thirst, and affirming the essential note of divine desire and ardent love contained in the biblical metaphor.

John Paul II affirms that:

“with those words (“I thirst”) Jesus confirms the ardent love of the Savior, and reveals the
depth of His desire to “open to all of us the fountain of water” to quench man’s thirst for God.”[1]

 Commenting directly on John 19: 28 in a General Audience in the following year, the Holy Father states:

On the Cross, in the moment when all is completed, in the moment when he is indeed glorified, the Fire of Love has come to penetrate the depths of Jesus’ being so that, by the powerful, interior movement of the divine Breath, he cries out from the depths, “I thirst” (cf., Ps. 130:1,2). But one can also say now that it is there in the depths of his being that the Fire of Divine Love meets the Waters of Divine Life so as to unleash them upon a humanity thirsting for salvation.[2]

On the feast of Pentecost in 1997:

To encounter the “living” Christ means also to meet the Christ who “thirsts” to save souls (cf. Jn.19: 28). And to quench the thirst of God Love and also our own thirst, there is no other way than to love and let ourselves be loved. To love, assimilating deeply the Christ’s ardent desire “that all people may be saved” (1 Tm 2:4); to let ourselves be loved, letting him use us according to “his ways which are not our ways” (see Is. 55:8) so that every man and woman on earth may come to know him and be saved.[3]

Most recently, the same Holy Father has commented on the gospel of the Samaritan Woman of the third Sunday of Lent, making reference to the thirst of Jesus in this other Johannine context:

Christ asks the woman “Give me to drink” (v.7). his material thirst symbolizes a far deeper reality: it expresses his ardent desire that his dialogue partner and her fellow-citizens will open themselves to faith. The Samaritan Woman, when she asks Christ for water, is basically revealing the need for salvation present in every heart. And the Lord is revealed as the one who offers the living water of the Spirit, that satisfies forever the infinite thirst (sic) of every human being. . . . The liturgy for this Third Sunday of Lent presents a splendid commentary on the Johannine episode when it says in the preface that Jesus “so deeply thirsted” for the salvation of the Samaritan woman that “he set on fire in her the flame of God’s love.[4]

And further on in the same homily: “Even today Jesus continues “to thirst”, namely, to desire humanity’s faith and love.”[5]

 The papal intervention that most touched Mother Teresa, however, was contained in the Holy Father’s Lenten message of 1993:

I invite you during this lent to meditate upon the Word of life, which Christ left to his Church in order to enlighten the journey of each of her members. Recognize the voice of Jesus who speaks to you especially during this Lenten season. Listen to the voice of Jesus who tired and thirsty says to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well: “Give me to drink” (Jn.4: 7). Look upon Jesus nailed to the Cross, dying, and listen to his faint voice: “I Thirst” (Jn.19: 28).[6]

Mother Teresa would write and speak enthusiastically to her Sisters of this message on various occasions. What is striking in the citation below, is her joy revealed at the end of the instruction to see the awareness of Jesus’ thirst penetrate the Church at large:

When Holy Father wrote the first time of the thirst of Jesus I wrote to thank Him, and then he wrote again. . . . That Satiating of the thirst of Jesus is a gift to our Society .  [7]

Also very significant is the Catechism’s proposal of the meeting of divine and human thirst as a metaphor for the understanding and practice of Christian prayer:

If you knew the gift of God.” The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him (Augustine).

You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Paradoxically, our prayer of petition is a response to the plea of the living God: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water.” Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.[8]