Thirsting

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Another excerpt from Rilke’s “Love Poems to God”

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.

Casual, easy, they move in the world

as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces

of those who know their thirst.

You cherish those who grip you

for salvation.

I especially love this image of a person “gripping” God for salvation. Hanging on, maybe only by his shoelaces or taking a grip on his shirt and hoping that we can hold on tightly enough that we can be dragged into salvation despite anything and everything that may be pulling us in the other direction, or like the woman in the Gospel who believed that if she could only touch the hem of Jesus’ garment that she would be healed (and she was).

“You take pleasure in the faces of those who know their thirst.” There is so much hope in those lines, especially for those who once again are hanging on by a thread. One who knows he thirsts for God even though up until this point in his life he has chosen to live in an arid desert and has spent all his energies dragging himself towards oases that turned out to be nothing but mirages, but then suddenly the thirst is recognized for what it is: a thirst for God, and once that thirst is acknowledged it begins to be satisfied, little by little, drop by drop.

I think of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 who asks the Lord for the “living water” of which He speaks, or of the psalmist who shouts out that “my body pines for you like a dry weary land without water.” (psalm 63)

Do you remember a time in your life when you may have been going around “untouched,” complacent in your lazy ignorance? Can you recall that very first time you discovered that when you thought about God or the things of God that you experienced a pleasure that you couldn’t quite put your finger on but which was unlike any pleasure that came from the passions? If so, you are in good company, because that is what happened to St. Ignatius prior to his own conversion.

I must also remind you of the fact that Jesus said “I thirst” as He was dying on the cross. And his thirst was not for the spoiled wine they put on a reed and pressed to his mouth, but rather it was His thirst for souls.

His thirst for you.

His thirst for you thirsting for him. And in you he takes great delight.

God bless you!