What Do You Thirst For?

by David Lins  |  03/12/2023  |  (Being) Catholic Matters

What do you thirst for? And I’m not talking about Coke, coffee, or whiskey.

A big, blue, animated genie with the voice of Robin Williams appears before you and gives you one wish. No one else is around to judge your answer. What do you go with? Then, ask yourself why?

The answer is what you thirst for.

In this weekend’s reading from Exodus, the people moaned, groaned, grumbled, and complained against Moses. They were lost in the desert and just wanted water. Well. They also wanted to get home, but they needed water first. And they were losing hope.

I just wrote a line in my next novel (and I am FAR from the first to write it), “Hope has never killed anyone, but hopelessness is deadly.”

Few things will kill your faith faster than hopelessness.

The Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel was virtually hopeless and thought she was thirsting for water. When Jesus met her at the well, he knew she needed something more.

She needed something she thought was impossible: someone who knew her – all of her – and loved her still.

Jesus revealed that he knew every part of her. There was no mistake or regret she could hide from him. Yet, he loved her, and her life changed. She left the water jar at the well and ran into town, professing who she had just met, unafraid of judgement. Jesus had set her free from all that.

And don’t miss it: she left the water jar because her real thirst had been quenched.

So understand this: there is nothing you can hide from Jesus. And there is no threat in that. There is thirstquenching freedom. Freedom from your mistakes. Freedom from the judgement of?

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