Jesus longs for each of us.
We all know what it is like to be thirsty. Working outside on a hot summer day or taking a long run can cause a huge thirst. Our mouth feels parched, we are hot and sweaty, and our whole body seems to be crying out for a drink—for anything that will cool us down and satisfy us.
We also know what it is like to feel hungry. We know the feeling of hunger pangs. We know what it’s like to feel empty. And we know the satisfaction that comes when we are finally able to eat.
This month, we want to look at spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst. We want to explore Jesus’ promise: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). We want to ask what it means to be hungry and thirsty for the Lord and for his righteousness—and how this hunger and thirst in themselves can help us to find Jesus in deeper ways.
Jesus Is Thirsty. Before we begin looking at our hunger and thirst for the Lord, however, it would be helpful to see how Jesus himself hungers and thirsts for us. Scripture tells us that we love because God first loved us
(1 John 4:19). It tells us that God sent his only Son into the world because he loved us (John 3:16). Jesus came because he wanted us. He died on the cross because he wanted to draw us back to him. Even now, reigning in the perfection of heaven and needing absolutely nothing, Jesus still wants to have us by his side. What magnificent love! What a magnificent God!
When Jesus hung on the cross, he called out: “I thirst” (John 19:28). These words obviously have a literal meaning. Jesus was thirsty. He was losing all of the fluid in his body, and he was going into shock. As a man like us in all things but sin, he was desperately craving something to drink. Psalm 22 gives us a graphic depiction of what this must have felt like: “Like water my life drains away; all my bones grow soft. My heart has become like wax, it melts away within me. As dry as a potsherd is my throat; my tongue sticks to my palate; you lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15-16).
Undoubtedly, John told us about Jesus’ thirst in part because he wanted to show all his readers that Jesus was fully human. John wrote his Gospel at a time when some people began to teach that Jesus was just a spirit who appeared as a man but who didn’t experience the full range of our humanity—including suffering. So John emphasized that in Jesus “the Word became flesh” and as flesh, he was capable of being hungry, tired, and thirsty.
Thirsty for His Father. But as is true of all the Scriptures, John’s Gospel functions on more than one level. And these words on thirsting are no exception. We just saw how Jesus was thirsty on a physical level, but there is a spiritual element here as well. Just as Jesus was thirsting for the refreshment of physical drink, he was also thirsting for refreshment—for support, love, and encouragement—from his heavenly Father.
Where John recounts Jesus saying, “I thirst,” St. Mark tells us that Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). In a sense, both Gospels are painting a picture of how deep Jesus’ interior suffering was, even as his physical suffering increased. These words don’t imply that Jesus was actually separated from his Father. They were always one with each other (John 17:22). But because he was in such physical pain, because he was carrying the weight of all our sins, and because he was enduring an all-out assault from the devil, Jesus felt forsaken and cried out for his Father.
Just a few hours earlier, Jesus was praying and asking his Father to “take this cup away” from him (Luke 22:42). Now as he is fulfilling his mission—with intense suffering and relentless temptation—he feels the full force of that cup, and it makes him thirst for his Father, whom he knows as his source of comfort, encouragement, and love.
Perhaps we can compare Jesus’ feeling of being forsaken to times when we ourselves are suffering intense pain, even to the point of wondering if anyone loves us or cares about us. When Jesus asked his Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” his words were both an acknowledgment of the battle he was fighting and an affirmation that even if it felt as if his Father had left him, he would not abandon his Father. He would still reach out for him in trust.
Thirsty for Us. On yet another layer, Jesus’ words, “I thirst,” point to us. They tell us how much Jesus thirsts for an intimate relationship with each one of us. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta made these words the cornerstone for her Missionaries of Charity. Urging her sisters to pray regularly about Jesus’ thirst, she once said: “Thirst is the only way to describe Jesus’ love for us.” Talking in the first person, as Jesus, Mother Teresa went on:
I thirst for you. Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe my love for you: I thirst for you. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you—that is how precious you are to me. I thirst for you. Come to me, and I will fill your heart and heal your wounds. I will make you a new creation, and give you peace, even in all your trials. I thirst for you. You must never doubt my mercy, my acceptance of you, my desire to forgive, my longing to bless you and live my life in you… . For me, there is no one any more important in the entire world than you. I thirst for you. Open your heart to me, come to me, thirst for me, give me your life—and I will prove to you how important you are to my heart.
Another example of Jesus’ thirst for us comes from the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who lived in Poland during World War II. He was captured by the Nazis and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp in May of 1941. In July, one of Kolbe’s fellow captives escaped, and in retaliation, ten men were chosen to be executed. One of the men begged his captors not to kill him, as he had small children and could not bear to leave them without a father. The soldiers remained firm until Kolbe volunteered to take the father’s place. The ten were led to an underground bunker, where they were left to starve to death. After two weeks, only four men were left alive, and Kolbe was the only one conscious. The four were killed by lethal injections on August 14, 1941. Fr. Kolbe took the place of another man, freely accepting his fate so that the other man could go free.
This is what Jesus did for us—but with far greater ramifications. By dying on the cross for our sins, he didn’t take the place of just one man. He died for all of us. This shows how deeply he thirsted for us and for our salvation. And because he freely took our place, he gave us the chance to be a whole new creation in Christ. When he died, he fulfilled his mission to satisfy the thirsty and fill the hungry with good things (Psalm 107:9).
With Bread and Water. The gospels are filled with stories about Jesus’ thirst for us—about his desire to fill us with his life and to unite us with him. There is the story of Jesus feeding the four thousand, which tells us how Jesus wanted to feed his followers. He worried that without food, they might collapse on the way home (Mark 8:1-8). Likewise, he worries now that we might collapse without his bread of life in the Eucharist, as we wait for him to come again.
Again, when he met a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well, Jesus reached out and told her about his desire to give her living water, which was capable of quenching her spiritual thirst forever (John 4:1-42). This story tells us that Jesus reaches out to us even when, like the woman, we can’t recognize who he is. He reaches out to us even when, like the woman, we can’t understand why he longs to wash away our sins. And he reaches out to us even when, like the woman, we can’t understand how his living water can be so satisfying. Why does he do all this? Because he thirsts for us!
These stories, and so many others, show us how deeply Jesus wants to bless those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They show us, in fact, that his hunger and thirst for our love is greater than our hunger and thirst for him. Now, isn’t that a comforting and encouraging thought?
Source:
http://wau.org/
