In the final, desolate moments of His thirty-three years on earth, Our Lord raised that voice which had once inspired hundreds with the power of divinity in a weak appeal.

  He pleads: “I thirst!”

Throughout every traumatic event of His Passion, and for the nearly three tortuous hours He has hung suspended on the Cross, Our Lord has never broken His silence to complain. Why now does He convey His discomfort, as one begging relief, nearly at the consummation of His sacrifice?

  He does it to disclose to us three truths.

  Our Saviour wishes us to know how far His love for us went. His violent physical thirst was instigated by the amount of blood He had lost through the scourging, the nailing, and the crowning with thorns; these torments combined, leaving scarcely any moisture in His body. He wanted us to realise that He intended to spend everything, literally to the last drop of His blood.

  He also wished us to know His passionate thirst for our salvation, the cause for which His whole life was a victim, and for our answering affection and gratitude. The heart of Our Lord was a burning chasm of love, throbbing its last pulses in a testament to His obedience to His Father and love of us, and yearning for that love to be returned. Tragically, He could see through all the ages men who would never even think of Him, or mention Him, or if they did, only use His name to curse. He saw all those who, despite His excruciating death on the cross, would throw themselves into hell and figuratively throw away His price of sorrow and suffering.

  What gall and vinegar this thought must have been to the longing thirst of Jesus!

  And lastly, He wished us to comprehend that He craved to suffer still more in order to satisfy and to further prove His love for us. This last species of thirst would have impelled Him to go on suffering for eternity, due to the infinity of His love.

    These three desires were what wrung from the compliant soul of Jesus His statement of thirst, and in response to which we so often, by our lukewarmness, offer Him the sponge soaked in vinegar and gall, which He nevertheless tasted as an appeasement of His sacrificial desire.