St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER IX: The second fruit to be derived from the consideration of the fifth Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

When I attentively meditate on the thirst which Christ endured on the Cross, another and very useful consideration occurs to me. Our Lord seems to me to have said, “I thirst,” in the same sense as that in which He addressed the Samaritan woman, “Give Me to drink.” For when He unfolded the mystery contained in these words, He added, “If thou didst know the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou perhaps wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.”[1] Now, how could He thirst Who is the fount of living water? Does He not refer to Himself in saying, “If any man thirst, let Him come to Me and drink?”[2] And is He not that rock of which the Apostle speaks: “And they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ?”[3] In fine, is it not He Who addresses the Jews by the mouth of Jeremias the Prophet: “They have forsaken Me the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water?”[4] It seems to me, then, that our Lord from the Cross, as from a high throne, casts a look over the whole world, which is full of men who are athirst and fainting from exhaustion, and by reason of His parching state He pities the drought which mankind endures, and cries aloud, “I thirst,” that is, I am thirsty on account of the dried and arid state of My Body, but this thirst will quickly end. The thirst, however, that I suffer from My desire that men should begin by faith to know that I am the true fount of living water, should come to Me and drink, that they may not thirst for ever, is incomparably greater.

Oh, how happy should we be if we would but listen with attention to this address of the Word Incarnate! Does not almost every man thirst, with the burning and insatiable thirst of concupiscence, after the fleeting and turbid waters of transitory and perishable things, which are called goods, such as money, honour, pleasures? And who is there that has listened to the words of his Master, Christ, and has tasted the living water of heavenly wisdom, that has not felt a loathing for earthly things, and begun to aspire after those of heaven, who has not laid aside the desire of acquiring and accumulating the things of this world and begun to aspire and long after those of heaven? This living water does not spring out of the earth, but comes down from heaven, and our Lord, Who is the fount of living water, will give it to us if we ask Him for it with fervent prayers and copious tears. Not only will it take away all eager longing for the things of earth, but will become an unfailing source of food and drink for us in this our exile. In this strain does Isaias speak: “All you that thirst, come to the waters,”[5] and that we may not think this water is precious or dear, he adds: “Make haste, buy and eat; come ye, buy wine and milk without any price.” It is called a water that must be bought, because it cannot be acquired without some effort, and without being in the proper dispositions for receiving it, but it is bought without silver or any bartering, because it is freely given, as it is invaluable. What the Prophet in one line calls water, he calls in the next wine and milk, because it is so efficacious as to embrace the qualities of water, wine, and milk.

True wisdom and charity is called water, because it cools the heat of concupiscence; it is called wine because it warms and inebriates the mind with a sober ardour; it is called milk because it nourishes the young in Christ with a strengthening food, as St. Peter says: “As new-born babes desire the rational milk.”[6] This same true wisdom and charity–the very opposite to the concupiscence of the flesh–is that yoke which is sweet, that burden which is light, which those who take up willingly and humbly find to be a true and real rest to their souls, so that they no longer thirst, nor do they labour to draw water from earthly sources. This most enjoyable rest for the soul has filled deserts, peopled monasteries, reformed the clergy, restrained the married. The palace of Theodosius the Younger was not unlike a monastery; the house of Count Elzearius differed but little from a house of poor religious. Instead of oaths and quarrels, the Psalms and the sound of sacred music were heard there. All these blessings we owe to Christ, Who satiated our thirst at the price of His own suffering, and so watered the arid hearts of men that they will never more thirst, unless at the instigation of their enemy they wilfully withdraw themselves from that everlasting spring.


ENDNOTES

1. St. John iv. 7-I0.
2. St. John vii. 37.
3. 1 Cor. x. 4.
4. Jeremias ii. 13.
5. Isaias lv. 1.
6. 1 St. Peter ii. 2.