It is hardly a novel insight to point out that you can live much longer without food than without water. Think about a time when you were really thirsty, when your mouth was dry and your throat hurt, and you were on the verge of a very bad headache. I don’t know about you, but at such times the only thing I want to drink is water, just plain, clear H2o.
One our Lord’s Seven Last Words as He hung on the Cross, which, like our Gospel this morning, comes from Saint John’s Gospel, was, “I thirst.”1 While John’s account does not feature the Lord’s cry from Psalm 22 found in the Synoptics- “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”- His thirst likely refers to another verse of this Psalm:
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death2John’s Gospel also uses this psalm when, earlier in the same chapter, he tells of the Roman soldiers dividing up his clothes.3
Saint Teresa of Calcutta (i.e., “Mother Teresa”) based the spirituality of the religious order she founded (the Missionaries of Charity) on Jesus’ words “I thirst.” Sisters of Charity spend a great deal of time praying before the Blessed Sacrament.
In each of their chapels, over the tabernacle, is a crucifix, with the words “I thirst” featured prominently near it. Mother Teresa said, “We have these words in every chapel of the M[issonaries of] C[harity] to remind us what a M[issionary of C[harity]is here for: to quench the thirst of Jesus for souls, for love, for kindness, for compassion, for delicate love.”4
There can be no question about whether God desires you. He desires you so much that sent dearly beloved Son to save you, to redeem you, to bring you to Himself. To quote Saint Paul from our reading from Romans: God “proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”5 This is the grace in which a Christian stands, the source of our hope.
On their trek through the hot, dry Sinai, the Israelites grew thirsty. Knowing they could perish for lack of water, many began to wonder, “Where is God?” Thirst nearly led them to rebel against Moses. Slavery in Egypt seemed better than death from thirst in the desert. Setting aside their general lack of trust in Him, in His mercy, God made water flow out of a rock in the middle of the desert.
The scrutinizing question, therefore, is do you thirst for God? With the psalmist, can you say, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”?6 This is the question to ponder as you prepare to enter the life-giving waters of baptism at the great Easter Vigil.
In our Gospel, the Samaritan woman at first doesn’t seem particularly thirsty for water from the spring that wells up to eternal life. It’s hard for her to understand that in offering this water, Jesus offers nothing apart from Himself. The reward for following Jesus is Jesus.
Jesus + nothing = everything. This becomes clear when we consider the sacraments of Christian initiation, does it not? Christian initiation culminates with the reception of Holy Communion, with receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, by which you become fully incorporated into His Body, the Church. You become part of Him.
Perhaps given the multitude of intimate relationships this woman has had, she’s grown a bit weary, a bit leery when it comes to promises of happiness. Given what Jesus tells her about herself, even among the Samaritans, she would’ve been looked down upon. Some have speculated that it was due to her ostracism that she comes to draw water in the middle of the day instead of early in the morning or at dusk- the normal times for this activity.
It's difficult to tell in her response to Jesus’ request to go get her husband whether she’s being disingenuous, seeking to hide her less-than-ideal living arrangement. It doesn’t matter because the Lord knows her situation and lets her know that He knows. Yet, He does not utter one word of rebuke, correction, or condemnation. Rather, He offers her life-giving water.
Like Jesus, we have nothing to say to someone about morality until s/he has caught a glimpse of how much God loves them. “In this is love,” another passage of scripture teaches us in harmony with Saint Paul, “not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”7 The best antidote for sin, as our Collect for today’s Mass indicates, is loving God through the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
I admit that I sometimes think if others really knew me, they wouldn’t like me, let alone love me. I believe most of us are conscious at some level of our unloveableness. This can be a cause of deep insecurity, not to mention a lack of authenticity, which causes me to be someone I think I should be instead of simply who I am. God’s love given in Christ, God’s love “poured into” my heart, is my security, my rock, my salvation. Frankly, without this coming to this realization, the rest is futile.
Like the Samaritan woman, Jesus knows everything about you and, because of, not in spite of, your unloveableness, He died and rose so that you may have life in and through Him. Just as it easy to love humanity because it is an abstraction but hard to love the person in front of me, so it is easy to say something like “Jesus died for the sins of the world” because that, too, is an abstraction.
C.S. Lewis nicely summarized the realization a Christian must have: “When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only [person] in the world.”8 Let that living water sink into the desert of your soul and the desert will bloom, teem with life.
Mother Teresa made Jesus’ statement “I thirst” so personal that she urged the sisters to imagine Jesus saying those words directly to them. She encouraged them to put their own name before “I thirst.” And so, today Jesus says to each of you, "I thirst." And the Church asks, “Are you thirsty?”
1 John 19:28.↩
2 Psalm 22:16.↩
3 John 19:24.↩
4 Mother Teresa, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Where There is Love, There is God (New York: Image, 2010), 51.↩
5 Romans 5:8.↩
6 Psalm 42:2.↩
7 1 John 4:10.↩
8 C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chap. 3 “Time Beyond Time.”↩
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