By IHE Graduate Scholar Marcela Duque
When Mother Teresa heard the words of Christ on the cross — “I thirst” — she found both her vocation to serve Christ “among the poorest of the poor” and the spirituality that would shape the vocation of those who joined her as Missionaries of Charity. She heard in these words the yearnings of Christ’s heart — a desire he already expressed to his disciples when he spoke of his death, saying, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). His thirst is a desire for souls.
Jesus also expressed his thirst to the Samaritan woman when he asked her to give him a drink as she was about to draw water from a well. Thirst and water are such powerful images of desire and its satisfaction that the conversation quickly moves from the natural to the spiritual level: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13–14)
In a commentary on this scene, Thomas Aquinas notes an apparent contradiction. If the water that Jesus gives is grace, the water of divine wisdom which will sate all thirst, then how is it that Wisdom itself says in the Book of Sirach that “those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more” (Sir 24:29)? How can the spring of living water — connected to the inexhaustible source from which water springs — be the cause of a deeper thirst?
Aquinas makes an illuminating distinction that has deepened my understanding of the nature of desire — a matter I explored in a past edition of this Newsletter. It is a distinction between the way material things and spiritual things are desired and possessed and the ulterior thirst — the desire — that each creates. Aquinas explains that we place great value in material things before we obtain them. We think of them as objects that will satisfy our desires, but then, when we finally get them, we find ourselves dissatisfied, and “we thirst more,” experiencing a greater desire for something else. With spiritual goods, however, desire works in a different way because we are unable to appreciate their value before we possess them. “A spiritual thing,” Aquinas says, “is not known unless it is possessed: no one knows but he who receives it (Rev 2:17).” That is to say, we might desire some spiritual good but only half-heartedly. Once God grants us that good, however, we desire it more because we know it intimately — not as an object to attain but a good given by God.
Like Augustine before his conversion, we may have a vague desire for a spiritual good (give me chastity but not yet) that is not enough to make us remove the obstacles in the way of fully seeking spiritual goods. And yet, the recognition of our lack of desire — our lukewarmness — for certain spiritual goods is already a gift. Aquinas’ insight is that desire will grow as we come closer to the spiritual good we hold at arm’s length, and it will be greatest once we have attained it. A desire to have a desire is already an act of faith that can be expressed in the short prayer that Pope Francis has encouraged us to say: “Give us desire and make it grow, Lord.” We will, then, not be satisfied but experience a thirst not to possess something else, as with the material thing that we found disappointing, but for the good we now enjoy and wish to possess perfectly. As we experience this thirst on our earthly journey, we are quenching Jesus’ thirst on the cross with our own thirst. This is what Mother Teresa and all saints did — those most desirous of women and men.
