Previous Reflections
REFLECTIONS
January 25, 2009
"’Love the Lord your God with all your heart… and Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37& 39
Insatiable Thirst
The words seem so simple and their meaning seems so clear. Jesus spoke them from the cross as He suffered the agony of crucifixion. “I thirst,” He cried, and who wouldn’t when hanging from spikes driven into the hands and lips parched from a scorching sun. Any human being would thirst. But in those simple words Mother Teresa discovered another meaning, a deeper one, a lasting one. And the meaning she found in the two words Jesus spoke from the cross defined her life’s purpose.
Mother Teresa was nearing a poverty stricken and over populated city in India. It was the place God called her to be. The train ride to the place she would commit her life was a long one, but something happened just before she arrived. The words, “I thirst,” kept ringing in her ears, only they said something more to her this time. Surely Jesus suffered from thirst on the cross. But now she understood his thirst was not something that went away with his death and resurrection. Jesus has an insatiable thirst for us to love him. A new understanding was born from the words, and with the new awareness came her lifetime yearning to love him more. And with each day of her life she did.
But that was not all she did. Mother Teresa found that the way to love Jesus was to reveal his love to others. Every waking moment of her life was dedicated to her purpose—to reveal the love of Christ to the world especially to those in poverty. And the rest of the story is familiar. Mother Teresa’s life carried the light of God’s love into a dark world.
She was truly one of the remarkable people to live in our time. But what she did is really what we are all called to do. Her life was a river of Christ’s love that quenched an insatiable thirst in everyone she met. That was how she revealed her love for her Lord.
Few of us will ever live like Mother Teresa. Only a few of us may be called to the place she served. But no matter where we live, we live among impoverished people—impoverished by an insatiable thirst for love. And just as she did, our lives can become rivers of Christ’s love that quenches the insatiable thirst of those around us. It becomes a way we can express our heartfelt love for our Lord, and we also carry the light of God’s love into a dark world.
“You are the light of the world,”
Richard Ì
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