The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Fifth Word

"I thirst.”  

John 19:28

Pablo Picasso, Crucifixion, 1930

Lord Jesus, what did you thirst for?  

Was your thirst to fulfill the psalmist’s prophecy (Jn. 19:28)?  

Were you thirsty for water?  Thirsty like a deer for water-brooks? like the Israelites in the wilderness? like the Samaritan woman at the well?  Did your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, dry as a potsherd (Ps. 22:15)?  Do the parched lips of your little ones—who wander in trackless wastes, in slums, in ghettoes—share in your thirst?

O Man of Thirst, what did you thirst for?  Did you also bear in your body (1 Pt. 2:24) our thirsts, our lusts?  Did you thirst like an alcoholic?  Like one thirsty for blood or power or revenge?  Did you bear in your body the burning, hissing cauldron of our illicit loves?*  Did you bear the thirst of those who scatter their streams of what in the streets (Pv. 5:15ff)? 

Fountain of living water, what did you thirst for?  Did you share the thirst of your people who dug, dig, will dig, cracked cisterns for themselves (Jer. 2:13)?  Were you thirsty for the Father?  Was the psalmist’s prayer also yours, “I spread out my hands to you; my soul gasps to you like a thirsty land” (Ps. 143:6)?  Were your arms spread out on the Cross to the Father?  Did you soul gasp to him?

How were you thirsty when your nourishment is to do the will of your Father, and here, on the Cross, you are most completely in obedience to him, even unto death?  Did you thirst for righteousness?  Or was love your thirst—love strong as death, which many waters could not quench (Cant. 8:7†)?

Lord, I do not know what you thirsted for, but I am—your whole creation is—thirsty for you.  Draw together our scattered thirsts that we might thirst only for you.  Quench our thirst, quench our thirst with the living water that flows from the deep well of your side.  Give us your overflowing wine to drink; we are athirst for you (Ps. 42:2).

* Augustine, Conf. 3.1.1
† cf. John Donne, “Death’s Duel”