When Jesus is dying on the cross, we hear Him cry “I thirst.” Today we see in the Gospel what Jesus really
means when he says that. Let’s allow the
Catechism of the Catholic Church help us to explain this: 2560
"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.
Today we see the dramatic encounter of those two
thirsts. Humanity, like the woman at the
well who has known six men, is parched, is thirsting for something that will
fill that infinite hole in her heart and soul.
It’s no surprise that finite things, even human persons, could never fill
that longing, that thirst. And if we can
muster up the courage to stop, to listen, to face our own hearts, then we will
find that we have done the same. We have
run from God in our search for water, for something to fill our thirst. But Lent is wake-up call for us to see that
we are not alone, that God is not hiding, but is rather waiting and longing
(even more that we are) for us to find Him.
But we have to let Him in, past the barriers, past the traps of our
enemy: traps like fear; like unforgiveness; like hardness of heart because we
don’t want to be hurt again; like hyperactivity; like pretending we don’t hear
our hungers. When we let down our guard,
if we let Jesus past those barriers, then we will find something that the world
cannot take away: a peace that comes from knowing we are loved and held.
Saint Teresa of Kolkata, known more popularly as Mother
Teresa, began her new life, her “call within a call” to reach out to the
poorest of the poor after she had a profound experience on a train ride. That experience was in fact a deep awareness
of the words from Christ’s Cross: I Thirst.
You may have heard that every house of her Missionaries of Charity would
contain these words under the crucifix in the chapel. These words were the mission that the sisters
were sent to fulfill: they were to find Jesus thirsting in the poor, and love
Him through them, satisfying at the same time both the deepest thirst that God
has, and the deepest thirst of humanity: to love and to be loved.
And that, my friends, is discipleship in a nutshell. That is what Christianity is all about. Saint Paul summarizes it clearly: “The Love
of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been
given to us.” And this gift is not meant
to be hoarded to ourselves; if so, it becomes sour. Rather it is meant to be shared, like Saint
Teresa shared it, with the world, starting with those who are right in front of
you.
Jesus, help us to hear our thirst, to let you quench it, and
to share your love with others who need it.
