Mother Teresa's Secret Fire. Joseph Langford

      First of all, what does the thirst of Jesus tell us about God? The symbol of thirst is neither complicated nor hard to understand: As the burning desert yearns for water, so God yearns for our love. As a thirsty man longs for water, so God longs for each of us. As a thirsty man seeks after water, so God seeks after us. As a thirsty man thinks only of water, so God thinks constantly of us: “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Lk 12:7). As a thirsty man will give anything in exchange for water, so God gladly gives all he has, and all he is, in exchange for us: his divinity for our humanity, his holiness for our sin, his paradise in exchange for our pain.

      For Mother Teresa, the mystery of God’s thirst, revealed in Jesus, is at the center of all, and the key to all. God’s yearning to “love and be loved” is the supreme force that inspires and directs all his works, from Creation, to Calvary, to the present day.

      Jesus’ words “I thirst” echo down throughout history. In these two words are reflected all that God has said and done from the beginning, and all he would wish to say to each of us. All of God’s words to humanity are a reverberation of this one humble phrase. In fact, all of Scripture is a commentary on the divine thirst, and in turn, the divine thirst sheds light on all of Scripture, on all of Revelation, on all that is.

       Why the Symbol of Thirst?

      Since it would be impossible to give an adequate sense of the infinite longing in the heart of God in mere words, or theological descriptions, God chose to communicate this mystery in metaphor — that of a burning, relentless, divine “thirst.”

      Mother Teresa was given a symbol to lift up before the poor that was entirely simple, yet many-faceted; simple enough to touch the hearts of the poor, yet deep enough to engage the intellect of scholars. The Holy Spirit portrays God’s longing in the most accessible language possible — that of human experience.

      As descendants of a nomadic desert people, constantly in search of water, the Israelites of Jesus’ time would have easily understood thirst as metaphor. So, too, would the poor of Calcutta, who had to scavenge for every drop of clean water they could find. Thirst is a metaphor that does not depend on culture, nor on erudition; a language capable of expressing the deepest truths without relying on technical, theological terms, nor on expressions that change from one era to the next, but solely on the universal human experience of thirst, and its attendant inner longing.