Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City
Good Friday 2025
April 18, 2025
To watch a video of this word, please click below:
To listen to an audio recording of the homily based on this word, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- Jesus on the Cross would experienced a tremendous loss of blood through the wounds in his hands and feet, through the 195 or more deep lacerations from the scouring, through the many punctures in his skull due to thick thorns in the mocking crown the soldiers have woven and press down upon his head, as well as from the exposure to air, and the tremendous amount of work it would have taken just to breathe. All of this obviously would have produced an extreme physical thirst. But Jesus hadn’t said anything about his severe dehydration, almost desiccation, until now.
- Moreover, he through whom all things were made, who formed the waters on the second day of creation, who had spent 40 days and nights in the desert with little or no water, who had changed 180 gallons of water into wine, who had said to the woman at the well that he would give her a spring of living water welling up within her to eternal life, who had earlier rejected the an anaesthetic sedative of wine mixed with myrrh, now, finally, said, “I thirst!” Why now? St. John tells us, “When Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I thirst.’” He accepted it to fulfill the Messianic prophecies. We heard one of them in the previous word from the Cross, in Psalm 22, when the Psalmist puts on the lips of the one suffering, “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death” (22:16). It was also clearly Psalm 69, which exclaims, “I am weary with crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes have failed, looking for my God. More numerous than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause” (69:3). Later in Psalm 69, we see another Good Friday prophecy when it says, “I looked for compassion, but there was none, for comforters, but found none. Instead, they put gall in my food; for my thirst they gave me vinegar” (69:21-22).
- In response to his cry, Mary, John, Mary Magdalen and Mary the wife of Clopas, had nothing to give. The soldiers were the only ones who remedy. They had some coarse wine, more vinegar, which they put on a hyssop branch and lifted to him. Hyssop was the same branch that God instructed to be used to take the blood of the Paschal lamb and sprinkle it on the lintels and door posts of the Jews in Egypt (Ex 12:22). It was the blood of the Passover lamb that saved the Israelites. As the Lamb of God was shedding his blood on Calvary to save the human race, the hyssop was a divine detail helping to clue people in how Jesus was fulfilling not just the prophetic words but the prophetic types or sacred actions as well.
- But what was this thirst all about? Was it simply for minimal lubrication so that his tongue would cleave to his palate? Could it have also been the fulfillment of Psalm 42 in which we pray, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” Was it a burning desire imminently to see his Father’s face? Surely that was part of it.
- But it seems clear, as many saints have commented, that there was something else at work. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, he expressed a different type of thirst. In a beautiful dialogue that the Church has the elect ponder in Lent as they prepare for baptism, Jesus said to the woman, “Give me a drink” and when she sought to upbraid him for his custom-breaking temerity in asking, he said, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water,” adding, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She responded, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty.” Jesus is in fact thirsty to have us exchange H20 for Living Water. He who said “Give me to drink” wants in fact to give to drink something that will hydrate the soul far more effectively than Gatorade the body. He wants to quench our souls, which have made to thirst for the living God. Like anyone who truly loves another, he desires that we allow him to love us this way and bring us to immerse ourselves in that love on the inside.
- In two other places in St. John’s Gospel, he describes how he wants to quench our thirst. The first is in his self-gift in the Holy Eucharist. He told us in his Bread of Life discourse in the Capernaum synagogue, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.… for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (Jn 6:35; 55-56). This sacred indwelling that begins with the living and life-giving waters of baptism is intensified in the Eucharist, when we receive the source of life giving water within our bodies and souls. The second reference Jesus makes to living water quenching our thirst comes soon after, when Jesus said during the Feast of Tabernacles in the temple area in Jerusalem, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” St. John tells us: “He said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive” (Jn 7:37-39). Just as Jesus wishes to give us his body and blood to satiate our hunger and thirst, so he wishes to send us his Holy Spirit so that we will experience God’s response to our thirst for him and his love. This presence of the Holy Spirit within us is what St. Paul describes in his Letter to the Romans: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” That is precisely why, St. Paul says, our “hope does not disappoint,” because of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into us.
- So Jesus’s thirst is ultimately for us, to have us receive him, to have us order our whole life in relationship to the Trinity, to bathe us in his saving, merciful love.
- St. Augustine, in his explanation of Jesus’ words, ‘I thirst’ in his commentary on Psalm 69, says that it shows far more than a desire for a physical drink, but rather the desire with which He was inflamed that those who had made themselves his enemies should believe in Him and be saved.
- St. Josemaria Escriva stated in a homily, “Jesus hungers, he thirsts for souls. On the Cross he cried out Sitio!, ‘I thirst’. He thirsts for us, for our love, for our souls and for all the souls we ought to be bringing to him, along the way of the Cross that is the way to immortality and heavenly glory” (Friends of God, 202).
- St. Teresa of Calcutta as a young Sister of Loreto on a train going on retreat to the mountains heard Jesus speak to her asking her to quench his thirst for souls to know how loved they are, asking her to follow him into the slums in order to poorest of the poor. That’s why in the chapels of the Missionaries of Charity, and I’m privileged to serve as a chaplain at their Convent in the Bronx, at Mother Teresa’s instruction, there are the words “I thirst” placed next to the crucifix behind the altar. The Cross shows the extent Jesus goes to give us the living water of his divine love and person. And St. Teresa wanted every Missionary of Charity, every co-worker, every priest, every visitor, to recognize that we are all called to be recipients and missionaries of that divine desire.
- In a letter to her community in 1993, she said, “‘I thirst’ is something much deeper than Jesus just saying ‘I love you.” Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you, you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him. The heart and soul of [a Missionary of Charity] is only this: the thirst of Jesus’ Heart, hidden in the poor. … ‘I thirst’ and ‘You did it to me’ — remember always to connect the two.” Jesus thirsts for us to share his thirst for others. He wants to be able to say to us, in the person of others, “I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.”
- There are many saints who have shared this thirst and like St. Teresa of Calcutta sought to quench it, not with the vinegar of wild grapes, but with the good wine united to Jesus’ precious blood. Who have become indeed missionaries of the infinite thirst of God.
- This is what we see in St. John Bosco, who just kept praying, “Da mihi animas!,” “give me souls,” especially the souls of young derelict boys whom God was asking him to form as good sheep of the Good Shepherd.
- We see it in St. Francis Xavier, the patron of the Church’s missionary work, who almost single-handed sought to convert three whole countries. He wrote to his former roommate, religious superior and friend St. Ignatius from India saying, “Again and again I have thought of going around the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them. … They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice. They would cry out with all their heart: ‘Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like—even to India.’” That’s the passion of a Good Shepherd going after lost sheep, who wants 100 out of 100, or, more aptly in 2025, 8 billion out of 8 billion. He wants us to come to him, receive his living water and then, while having our deepest desires satiated, paradoxically also to share his thirst.
- We see this in St. Patrick who returned to Ireland after escaping from slavery out of thirst that the Irish would come to thirst for the Living Water and receive it to overflowing.
- We it in so many of the great American saints who were missionaries seeking to quench Jesus’ thirst for souls and help those souls come to thirst for God. We see it in the North American Marytrs, like St. Isaac Jogues, the first priest ever in Manhattan, remembered the door of this Cathedral, who left France in order to bring that living water to the Hurons, Iroquois and Mohawks in Canada and northern New York.
- We see it in St. Frances Xavier Cabrini who left Italy to come to bring that living water to quench the thirst of the Italians, of orphans, and so many others here in New York and in 66 other missions in the new world.
- We see it in St. Junipero Serra, who left Spain to bring to the indigenous in Mexico and all the way up the coast of California.
- We see it in the Martyrs of Georgia, Spanish Franciscans soon to be beatified, who brought it to the native peoples from Florida up to Virginia.
- We see it in St. Rose Philippine Duschesne who left France to bring that living water first to students around St. Louis and then to the Potawatomi in Kansas.
- We see it in the German missionaries St. John Neumann and Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, who brought that living water here to Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to upstate New York, to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New Orleans and so many other places.
- We see it in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton who was passionate about bringing it to Catholic school children here in New York, in Baltimore, in Emmitsburg and beyond as well as in St. Mother Theodore Guerin who left France to bring it to schoolgirls and the sick in Indiana.
- We see it in Blessed Stanley Rother and Blessed James Miller who sought to bring it to those in Guatemala and Nicaragua.
- All of them were thirsty to quench Jesus thirst for others and to help awaken and inform the innate thirst for God that the Lord places within us. Like St. Ignatius of Loyola once asked about Saints Dominic and Francis, “Why can’t I do what they have done?,” and God gave him graces to found the Jesuits and do so much for God’s greater glory, so each of us is called to ask today: Why can’t I commit my life to quenching Jesus’ thirst, to receiving his love and helping everyone I can to receive it and share it?
- God’s thirst for us is a great source of hope. If he thirsts for us this much as to enter the human race and give his human life out of love for us then what won’t he do to help us thirst to receive his love and then thirst to take our share in the Mission of the Church with regard to his thirst for others and stoking their thirst for God?
- Jesus promised, “Truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose his reward” (Mt 10:42). If that’s the reward given just for a cup of cold water, how much more can we expect if we try to quench his thirst and others’ with living water? That’s the thirst for which Jesus was longing on Calvary. That’s what we’re called to see every time we look at him lifted up.
- And so we finish this word by praying: Hail O Cross, sign of the infinite thirst of God for us and for others, our only hope! Help us to lift high that cross and satiate your thirst every day!
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