St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER VI: The fifth fruit to be drawn from the consideration of the fourth Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

The fifth word, which is found in St. John, consists of the one only word “I thirst.” But to understand it we must add the preceding and subsequent words of the same Evangelist. “Afterwards Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar. And they putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to His mouth.”[1] The meaning of which words is, that our Lord wished to fulfil everything, which His Prophets, inspired by the Holy Ghost, had foretold about His life and death; and now everything had been accomplished with the exception of having gall mixed with His drink, according to that of the sixty-eighth Psalm: “And they gave Me gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.”[2] Therefore was it that He cried out with a loud voice, “I thirst;” that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. But why in order that the Scriptures should be fulfilled? Why not rather because He was really thirsty and wished to quench His thirst? A prophet does not prophesy for the purpose of that being accomplished which he foretells, but he prophesies because he sees that that will be accomplished which he foretells, and therefore he foretells it. Consequently the foreseeing or foretelling anything is not the cause of its happening, but the event that is to happen is the cause why it can be foreseen and foretold. Here we have a great mystery laid open before us. Our Lord had suffered a most grievous thirst from the beginning of His Crucifixion, and this thirst kept on increasing, so that it became one of the greatest pains He endured on the Cross, for the shedding a great quantity of blood parches a person, and produces a violent thirst. I myself once knew a man who was suffering from a serious wound and consequent loss of blood, who asked for nothing else but drink, as though his wound were of no consideration, but his thirst terrible. The same is related of St. Emmerammus, the martyr, who was bound to a stake, and otherwise grievously tortured, yet complained only of thirst. But Christ had been dragged backwards and forwards through the city, during the Scourging at the pillar had most copiously shed that Blood which during His Crucifixion flowed from His Body, as from four fountains, and this loss of Blood had continued for hours. Must He not then have suffered a most violent thirst? Yet He endured this agony for three hours in silence, and could have endured it even to His death, which was so near at hand. Then why did He keep silent on this point for so long a time, and at the moment of death, disclose His suffering by crying out, “I thirst!” Because it was the will of God that we should all know His Divine Son had suffered this agony, and so our heavenly Father had wished it to be foretold by His Prophet, and He also wished our Lord Jesus Christ, for the sake of giving an example of patience to His faithful followers to acknowledge that He suffered this intense agony by exclaiming, “I thirst;” that is, all the pores of My Body are closed, My veins are parched up, My tongue is parched, My palate is parched, My throat is parched, all My members are parched; if any one longs to relieve Me, let him give Me to drink.

Let us consider now what drink was offered Him by those who stood by the Cross. “Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar. And they putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop put it to His mouth.” Oh, what consolation! What a relief! There was a vessel full of vinegar, a beverage which tends to make wounds smart and hasten death, and for this reason was it kept in order to make those who were crucified die the quicker. In treating of this point, St. Cyril says with truth, “Instead of a refreshing and cooling draught, they offered Him one that was hurtful and bitter.” And if we consider what St. Luke writes in his Gospel, this becomes all the more probable: “And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him and offering Him vinegar.”[3] Although St. Luke speaks of this as happening to our Lord as soon as He was nailed to the Cross, still we may piously believe that when the soldiers heard Him exclaiming, “I thirst,” they offered Him vinegar by means of that same sponge and reed which in their derision they had previously offered Him. We must conclude then that as at first a little before His Crucifixion they presented Him with wine mixed with gall, so at the point of death they gave Him vinegar, a drink most distasteful to a man in His agony, so that the Passion of Christ was from first to last a real and genuine Passion which admitted no consolation.


ENDNOTES

1. St. John xxi. 28, 29.
2. Psalm lxviii. 22.
3. St. Luke xxiv. 36.