"I thirst"

There’s a lot to unpack in our readings this morning, but I’ll try to keepe it focused and tight. The human body is made up of about 60% water. The number varies, based on gender, age, and other factors, but on average we’re about 60% water. So it’s not surprising that studies and experiments over the centuries have shown that, after the air we breathe, WATER is the most important thing we need to stay alive. Sure, we need to eat to sustain ourselves. But you could probably go for weeks without food. Without water though, we become unsettled, tired, and cranky in just a few hours. And without water, most of us wouldn’t last a week. That’s why our bodies start to crave water so quickly - it’s essential for us to function. And so // we thirst - it’s the human condition.

Water and thirst are central to our readings today. The Samaritan woman at the well comes with her water jar at the hottest part of the day. If she could do without water, clearly she wouldn’t be there then, but would wait until it was cooler. The people of Israel in the desert were desperate for water, ready to turn against Moses and their leaders, to STONE them, and to turn their backs on GOD HIMSELF, in spite of the miracles they’d seen. And finally, Jesus himself. Tired, dusty, and hot after a long walk in the desert sun, sitting on the edge of a deep well, with no human way to get a simple drink of water. All of them - THEY THIRST for the water so essential to earthly life.

But there’s a lot more at work here. After going back and forth about a drink from the well, Jesus raises the stakes. He tells the Samaritan woman, “If you knew who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Clearly we’re talking a different KIND of water here, even if the Samaritan woman doesn’t yet understand. Just as our bodies need water, so too does our soul – living water, the waters of baptism, the waters of new life, the waters that our catechumen and catechumen throughout the world are longing to receive at the Easter Vigil. And we crave those spiritual waters as well, whether we realize it or not. Psalm 42, which priests and deacons pray in the LOTH, says it well: “Like a deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is thirsting for you, my God. My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life; when can I enter and see the face of God?”

Truly we DO thirst, yearning for this Living Water so essential to our SPIRITUAL LIFE. We fill our lives with distractions and worldly substitutes, but the satisfaction they bring is fleeting and temporary. Again and again we come back to the well with our bucket, seeking but never finding, until finally we surrender, and say with the Woman at the Well, “Sir, give me this (Living) Water that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

There’s another kind of thirst at work here as well. Christ didn’t come to Samaria by accident. He could easily have gone a different way through Jewish lands. And he doesn’t come for us by accident either. Christ came to bring salvation - to the Samaritan woman, to the Samaritan people, and to us as well. Just as the Israelites thirsted for water in the desert, and just as we and the Woman at the Well thirst for the Living Water of God, so too we hear the words of Christ from the cross, “I THIRST.” No doubt it was unbearably hot and dry on Calvary in the heat of the day, as Jesus hung on the cross for us. But Christ thirsts not just for water. He thirsts for us. He thirsts to bring salvation to His people, to have us embrace and accept His teaching. He thirsts for us not to harden our hearts, but to trust in Him, and return at least a little of His unconditional love for us by serving those in need around us.

God’s love for us in boundless, and his grace is without end. He sent His only Son for our salvation. But receiving that grace - it’s not like a wall receiving paint. It’s more like a spouse receiving her lover’s kiss. It requires a response to be fulfilled. God’s grace // is a gift freely given. But gifts must be freely accepted, as well as freely given. Christ THIRSTS for US to accept God’s divine gift of grace // with faith, hope, and charity – a gift freely given, but one we must freely accept and act upon.

In the chapels of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity throughout the world, Christ’s words, “I THIRST,” are prominently displayed, as a reminder that Christ thirsts even now for us to turn back to Him. St. Teresa explained it this way: “We do all that we can do // just to make God forget the ingratitude of man // in return for his boundless love and to make Him remember His mercies. He hangs before us on the cross crying out, ‘I thirst.’ It is to quench the thirst of this divine Lord that the Missionaries of Charity do all that seems madness to the world. We are truly blessed in having a little share in the following of the cross.”

That’s what our Lenten observance is supposed to be about – through prayer, repentance, and acts of charity to those in need, to have a little share in quenching the thirst of our divine Lord who died for us; to recognize and acknowledge our thirst for the Living Water that only Christ can provide; and to seek Him with a humble and contrite heart. Even as we thirst for Him, Christ is calling out to us, “I thirst.” This Lenten season, may we harden not our hearts, but answer His call with prayer, penance, and charity.