Patrick Johnson
St. Jane de Chantal Writing Group
Let anyone who thirsts, come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture says: “Rivers of living water will flow from within him.” [Jesus] said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. (John 7:37–39, NAB)
Thirst. Such a basic human need, and yet so sublime. Does any word define the human heart more? Is not the human being constitutively thirst and desire? Not for mere water, mind you, but for truth, love, goodness, beauty, happiness, justice—and the list goes on. Moreover, no matter how much we have of something good that is limited, we always want more, or for it to last. We crave, we thirst for, we need the infinite, the eternal!
God knows this motor in our hearts. He put that thirst in us. He deliberately engineered our hearts such that they would propel us in the general direction of Himself, precisely through desire for the infinite and eternal. The result is that before we are even looking for God, God has already found us! He has found us at the foundation of our hearts. And what happens if we follow that blueprint of desire to its true end? We arrive at Jesus, the infinite incarnate, perhaps after a long and tiring and painful search. Yes, Jesus finally gives us what we need to live spiritually: the Living Water, the Holy Spirit. God has led us to God who gives us God, and we taste God’s true life.
However, even in the presence of Jesus, the process of satiation is not automatic. An additional perquisite is required to drink and, as Jesus said, to let the Living Water flow from within oneself. That necessity is faith. Faith must recognize that God is good and Christ present, offering that exceptional drink for which we have been looking, and indeed that its givers have been looking for us! Faith is the door by which the Living Water can present and enter and start to bring life to our decaying sinful selves, and in turn begin to make us spreading conduits of Living Water to recreate the world.
Such a project requires proper working order. One cannot simply choose to take a little bit here, believe a little bit there. No. Jesus has his sights set on something much greater. He desires the whole person, and the whole world; and to irrigate them correctly, he demands the centermost place in each one’s heart. One meaning of the context of Christ’s cry being on the last day of a Jewish feast reliving the anticipation for the Promised Land (Jn 7:37a, see Ex 16), is that exactly at the height of our religious expectation, Jesus proposes himself as a new Center, soliciting a yes or no. Recall how Jesus Christ redeemed the Samaritan woman at the well, whose heart was divided between five previous husbands (John 4:16–19). He said to her, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst” (John 4:14). Her life said, I am unsatisfied. His gaze said, You are mine.
The Lord is not just talk. “He loved his own in the world, and he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). Jesus died and rose for us sinners. He left us the Sacraments; his blood and water poured out such Mercy from his side on the Cross. He did that for you, for me. What is more, He does it every day in the re-presentation of his sacrifice in the Mass and its heavenly counterpart beyond the veil. He has been raised and ascended to heaven, and from his Risen depths he continues to dispense the Living Water of the Holy Spirit on his faithful People who continue their yes. Come Holy Spirit, fall afresh on me!
Thirst. It is the insatiable ingredient of the human ‘I.’ It is the beginning of the renewal of ourselves and of the world. Thirst is God’s finger within us begging us to seek Him out soon for a fulfilling drink only he can provide, no one else.