I Thirst

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28).

Christ is “the rock from which the wandering Israelites drank in the desert” (1 Cor. 10:4), and He is also “the Living Water that rehydrated the woman at the well” (John 4:13-14).

On the Cross, the Living Water became thirsty, securing the salvation that His spiritually thirsty people desperately needed.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).

“One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34), a fountain of the sacramental life of the Church, there to quench all our thirst.

St. John links the statement “I thirst” to the fulfillment of the Scriptures. There were at least twenty Old Testament prophecies fulfilled during the twenty-four hours surrounding Our Lord's death. So, by highlighting how the Old Testament Scriptures were fulfilled throughout Our Lord's Crucifixion, John showed that everything was happening according to God's plan.

When Jesus said, “I thirst” on the Cross, He was alluding to a prophecy in Psalm 22:15: “My mouth is dried up like a broken piece of ceramic material, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.”

St. John earlier cited this same Psalm regarding the dividing of Our Lord's garments among the Roman soldiers (John 19:23).

In response to Our Lord's request for something to drink, the soldiers offered Him wine vinegar. “A jar of wine vinegar was there,” we're told, “so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it up to Jesus' lips” (John 19:29).

Wine vinegar was the cheapest and easiest wine for soldiers to acquire. It was probably diluted with water. Earlier, we're told, Our Lord refused to drink the vinegar, gall, and myrrh offered Him to relieve His suffering (Matt. 27:34).

After that, the soldiers mockingly offered Him wine vinegar, but did not allow Him to drink (Luke 23:36).

Then several hours later, Our Lord says, “I'm thirsty.” This time the soldiers gave Him some. This was to fulfill what's said in Psalm 69:21, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”

Immediately after receiving the drink, Our Lord said, “‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30).

Some say that Our Lord asked for a drink so that He might clearly and powerfully declare his final statement, “It is finished.”

Hanging on the Cross, Our Lord suffered bitter agony and darkness while covered in our guilt, sin, and shame. When the act of purchasing our Redemption was complete, nothing more was needed.

Everything Jesus had come to do on earth was now finished. The Scriptures were fulfilled. Christ's work was done. The battle was over. The victory was won.

All that God had wanted, and all that the prophets had foretold was complete. Our Lord surrendered Himself to death.

Three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, say that as Jesus died, “He cried with a loud voice: ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ And when he said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:46).

The death of Jesus finished His work of Redemption, atonement, and reconciliation. Through His sacrificial death on the Cross, the Lamb of God paid our debt and took away our sins. Our ransom was now complete with that resounding voice.

Our Lord wanted all the people to hear those words, which still ring strong today: “It is finished.” “It is accomplished.”

Those who stood around the Cross on that dusty hill could feel Our Lord's raspy cry reverberate in their dry throats: “I thirst.” These are the words of one whose vitality was almost dried up to death.

Yet, in those words, we witness the thoughtful tenderness as He breathes these words into Scripture for our edification.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for refuting error, for guiding people's lives, and teaching them to be upright.” St. Paul says this is how “someone who is dedicated to God becomes fully equipped and ready for any good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

The words “I thirst” reveal rich truths about their speaker. Our Lord's cry of thirst would have called the attention of those familiar with the Old Testament.

In at least two ways, the “I thirst” confirmed Our Lord's promise that in Jerusalem, “Everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished,” says St. Luke (Luke 18:31).

First, God foretold that His Messiah would thirst. And second, before Christ came to earth, He said through David in Psalm 69:21 that he would drink bitterness: “For my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

Ironically, the Psalmist was drowning in deep waters (Ps. 69:1,2,15), yet his throat was dry. (Ps. 69:3), and his only drink was bitterness. Our Lord, swirling in a sea of sorrow, received only bitter wine to wet his parched tongue.

Our Lord suffered as a real man, like us in all things but sin. He wasn't pretending to be thirsty to illustrate spiritual truths. St. Paul to the Hebrews says, “Our High Priest fully sympathizes with all the pains and discomforts that come from living in a sin-afflicted world” (cf. Heb. 4:15).

All the times that we might experience those pains and discomforts, we could think of the pain and discomfort of Our Lord on the Cross every time we're thirsty or yearning to have that thirst satisfied.

If ever there were understanding ears into which we should speak our hurts and cry out for grace and mercy, it's those ears that on Calvary heard the sticky crackling of His dry mouth.

On many occasions during the day, we could try to bring to mind those moments of Christ alive on the Cross.

In the Book of Hosea, God threatened to make unfaithful Israel “a parched land, and fill her with thirst (Hos. 2:4).

The Book of Lamentations says, “The tongue of the one afflicted by God's judgment sticks to the roof of his mouth for thirst” (Lam. 4:4).

Our Lord inserted Himself into His parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In hell, the rich man cried out for mercy, pleading for Lazarus to “dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish at this pain” (Luke 16:24).

One great pain associated with hell is the pain of thirst. Anything would be any type of alleviation. He doesn't say, ‘Send Lazarus with a fire truck or with the hose’—just “dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue.”

The rich man's croaking screams for relief are denied. So long as He endured the hellish agony of God's wrath against sin, Christ's tongue, likewise, rattled in His mouth.

Even when His tongue tasted the sour wine from the sponge, it felt little relief. It would have burnt as the vinegar washed over His withered cells.

All this is a further portrait of the cup of God's wrath that Our Lord had consented to drink.

“Are you able to drink of the chalice of which I am about to drink?” (Matt. 20:22).

“Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). There's a lot of reference to drinking and to chalices, and the reference to Our Lord's Passion. Hours before, Our Lord had shuddered over this anticipated cup of suffering.

Then He drank the wine like a man who drinks salt water to dampen his dehydration. On the Cross, the Mediator of the covenant of grace experienced the thirst-curse earned by the covenant breakers.

And so, because we have forsaken God, “the fountain of living waters we have got for ourselves,” says the Book of Jeremiah, “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13), we are the thirsty ones.

God's wayward ones, we're told in Isaiah, “are parched with thirst” (Isa. 5:13). We're spiritually dehydrated—a deadly condition.

Pope Francis speaks frequently about the spiritual emptiness of the world. There's a great hunger and thirst in humanity for the things of God.

Our Lord musters a cry from His dry, hoarse throat—and all He gets is sour wine.

Why? Because, St. Paul said, on the Cross, “He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).

Jesus announced His thirst, knowing that “all was now finished” (John 19:28). About our salvation, He could say: “It is accomplished (John 19:30).

And so, Jesus died thirsty, but He arose refreshed. Our Lord thirsted after the full restoration of His Father's fellowship, that the smile of His Father's face, we're told in the Psalms, “might be turned towards him and towards his people again” (Ps. 69:16-17).

In His glorification, beginning with His Resurrection, His thirst was quenched.

There's a joy there, a joy that we all experience when we quench our thirst, or whatever it is we may be thirsting. It could be a victory in the Champions League, or a victory in some task that we're involved in, or something that our mother told us to do that finally we've managed to do.

Our thirst for that “it is finished,” “it is accomplished”—it is there.

There's a parish church in Singapore that's called The Church of the Risen Christ. There's a joy in those words.

The Book of Isaiah says, “God will hear the cry of his thirsty people” (Isa. 41:17).

Our Lord says in St. John, “Whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

We could think of all the souls around us who deep down are thirsting for the things of God.

We could echo those words, “Give me the water of eternal life, gained from me at the cross, that I may thirst no more” (John 4:14).

In the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, it says “they shall neither hunger any more nor thirst anymore” (Rev. 7:16).

Because Our Lord thirsted on the Cross, He can quench the deepest longings of our soul.

Because Our Lord suffered rejection and cruelty, He's able to offer healing to us for all the wounds that need healing.

Because Jesus died on the Cross, He meets us in the place of death and transforms us into a place of eternal life.

A Jesus or a Messiah who didn't bear these truths would be of no use to us. But thankfully, through the mercy of God, that's not the case, because Jesus said, “I thirst.”

The Book of Exodus talks about how the Israelites were dying of thirst in the desert. Moses turned to Yahweh and spoke to Him about his people and the lack of water.

The Lord told him, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the rod with which you struck the Nile, and go” (Ex. 17:5).

The Book of Exodus continues, “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it that people may drink” (Ex. 17:6).

This is what Moses did, and there was abundant water for everyone.

When St. Paul interprets this passage in the First Letter to the Corinthians, he says that the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).

The rock was an image and a symbol of Christ, from whom “living water flows without measure” (John 7:38), flows from His wounded side.

The Preface of the Sacred Heart says that we draw close to that Sacred Heart “to draw water in joy from the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3). The sacraments, the waters of grace, flow into our soul and build us up on the inside.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).

There was a feast of the tabernacles. It was the Jewish feast of water, and during those days, the people would give thanks to God for the water that their ancestors received during their journey to the Promised Land. There were also days of petition in which they would ask for abundant rains for the crops.

Our Lord, surrounded by a great multitude on the last day of this feast, the most solemn one, claimed in a loud voice: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

In St. John, it says, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Our Lord presents Himself as the one who can quench the unquenchable hearts of man and give them peace.

“For you have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions). It's been said that the world is a throat thirsting for God. It tries to quench its thirst with things that do not satisfy it and worse, only increase it.

Our Lord told the Samaritan woman: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again” (John 4:13). You will thirst for material goods, for pleasures. But “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 27).

Only in God will he find the truth and happiness that he never stops searching for. Our thirst can only be quenched in Him. Only He can fill our always unsatisfied hearts.

Psalm 63:1 says: “Oh God, you are my God. I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.”

Sometimes that's how we find our hearts, like a dry and weary land where no water is. But the words of Our Lord can fill us with hope: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me...” (John 7:37).

Isaiah the prophet had already announced it: “Everyone who thirsts, comes to the waters” (Isa. 55:1).

Our Lord is the rock from which waters flow without measure—living waters. He waits for us in prayer and in the sacraments.

“If you knew the gift of God” (John 4:10), He told the woman at the well. The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well “for we come to seek water” (cf. John 4:7a).

It's there Christ comes to meet every human being. It's He who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. He just thirsts, and His asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us.

Ultimately, Christ's thirst is about souls. He thirsts for souls on the Cross. Christ died for souls.

That can fill us with a great apostolic zeal. I also have to thirst for souls because Christ thirsts for them. I have to seek them, I have to look for them, I have to go after them in all sorts of ways.

Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst for ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for Him, and He fills our unsatisfied hearts.

He's looking for us. We shouldn't hide then in anonymity, in the days that may be filled with all sorts of hustle and bustle. We should go to prayer with peace, without hurry, with the desire to encounter Him, and to talk to Him slowly about what is happening to us, about our most intimate thoughts.

Lord, we are thirsty for you! Show us the path towards that undying fountain, towards that fountain of living water.

“When Jesus heard that the Pharisees had found out he was making and baptizing more disciples than John—though in fact it was his disciples who baptized, not Jesus himself—he left Judea and went back to Galilee. He had to pass through Samaria. On the way he came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour” (John 4:1-6).

The evangelist, when he said that Jesus was tired by the journey, could have added, maybe, ‘I'm thirsty.’ Very often when we're tired we're thirsty. We need some water, or a cup of tea, or something to revive us. There was an advertisement years ago on Irish television. It used to say, ‘A cup of tea revives you.’ Maybe what Our Lord needed in that moment was a cup of tea.

“When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me something to drink’” (John 4:7b).

He was thirsty, but not just for material water, but thirsty for souls, and he rises to the moment when this soul comes close to him—as we have to try to rise to the occasion of the apostolic opportunities that God may present to us, in season and out of season; when we're full of zeal and energy, and when we're like Our Lord sitting down by the well, gasping for a cup of tea.

“His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew. How is it that you ask me, a Samaritan, for something to drink?’ (Jews, of course, did not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus replied to her, ‘If you only knew what God is offering you, and who it is that is saying to you—Give me something to drink—you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water’” (John 4:8-10).

Our Lord takes the conversation on to a different plane. The woman is talking about a very material level and Our Lord is talking very supernatural things—which at times we have to do in our conversations with our friends.

“‘You have no bucket, sir,’ she answered, ‘and the well is deep. How do you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus replied, ‘Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but no one who drinks the water that I shall give will ever be thirsty again. The water that I shall give will become a spring of water within, welling up for eternal life.’ The woman said, ‘Give me some of that water so that I may never be thirsty or come here again to draw water’” (John 4:11-15).

The Preface of the Third Sunday of Lent said, “For when he asked the Samaritan woman for water to drink, Christ had already created the gift of faith within her, and so urgently did he thirst for her faith that he kindled in her the fire of divine love.”

When Our Lord said, “I thirst” on the Cross, He invites each one of us to thirst, to have those same sentiments that He had for love, for truth, for beauty—ultimately for souls—to spread love and truth and beauty everywhere.

And so, we could ask Our Lord that we might become more Christ-like, and ask Our Lady that we too might know how to stand beside the Cross like she did, and hear that cry of Our Lord, so that we might have the thirst for souls that Christ had on the Cross.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD