The Fifth Word: “Sitio.”
“Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: ‘I thirst.’ Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar. And they, taking a sponge full of vinegar and hyssop, put it to His mouth.”
—John 19:28–29
“And they gave Him wine to drink mingled with gall. And when He had tasted, He would not drink.”
—Matthew 27:34
Saint Bonaventure’s Meditation on the Fifth Word86
The fifth leaf of the mystical vine, and the fifth string of our spiritual lyre, is the fifth pronouncement of the most loving Jesus upon the cross, when He said: “I thirst.” In response to this, “they gave Him wine to drink, mixed with gall.”87
All the members of the body of the most gentle Jesus had already been cruelly punished and had suffered; it remained now for His persecutors only to punish also His tongue. Therefore, in His thirst, they gave to him the wine of “an alien vine, filled with bitterness.”88 They offered Him this not that He might drink properly, but rather merely to taste. For to inflict the pain of the bitter taste of this horrendous drink, a single taste would suffice.
O Jesus, joy and hope of my heart,
You are to me both a loving thirst,
And a delightful refreshment!
With Your arms extended upon the altar of the cross,
You became the sacrifice which redeemed the human race.
As the world beheld You, stripped of Your garments and Your glory,
And affixed to the wood,
As the earth and sky lamented over You,
As the foe mocked and derided You,
As Your friends and disciples fled in fear,
As the nails held fast Your limbs and Your sinews writhed,
As Your wounds stung and Your lifeblood poured forth,
As Your muscles trembled and Your strength waned,
Then a burning thirst overwhelmed You.
This was a thirst born of pure love,
A fervent desire for our salvation.
With infinite kindness then did You say:
“I thirst!
Yes, I thirst for the faith of humankind;
I long for their salvation.
And it is for this reason alone that I suffer now as I do!”89
Arnold’s Commentary on the Fifth Word90
Behold once more a mystery, and a divine oracle! Our Lord has already responded, from the throne of the cross, to the repentant thief and to His own Blessed Mother. To confirm our hope and to assure us of the boundlessness of His mercy, He promised to the thief entrance into the kingdom of heaven. To Mary, His beloved Mother, He committed His beloved disciple, Saint John, to serve as her guardian and protector in the role of an adopted son—and thereby revealed His unwavering love and care for her and for all His Church, through this relationship of filial and maternal intimacy and affection.
But now, having arranged matters for others so mercifully, Christ suddenly exclaims: “I thirst!” His sacred body was exhausted as He poured forth blood and sweat in endless torrents. Moreover, He had borne the cruel and burdensome weight of the wooden cross, to which He was now brutally affixed, upon His shoulders. For many people, when they are overcome with physical suffering and fatigue, a dark cloud of unconsciousness falls upon them suddenly, and envelops them in merciful oblivion for a time. But for others, a tremendous wave of thirst is inflamed within them. Perhaps it was thus for Jesus at this time.
But I like to understand the thirst which Our Lord expressed as a mystical symbol. It was not so much the refreshment of physical drink for which He yearned (although He may well have desired that at the time), but rather the salvation of our souls. For the crowd of people by which He was then surrounded was comprised of His mockers, scorners, and persecutors, and He could not expect any care or kindness from such a malicious and hard-hearted multitude. Certainly, they would have been more inclined to have sought to inflict some fresh torment upon Him then to have relieved His thirst.
So when Christ declared, “I thirst,” He knew that it was unlikely that anyone would show Him any real compassion. For their bloodlust and cruelty had not been sated by the scourgings and blows which He had suffered, nor even by the crucifixion—for they continued to bay at Him, like a pack of vicious and ravenous hounds.
Yet Christ was now fulfilling the prophetic words of the psalm of David. For He had become “like a tumbling wall or a tottering fence,”91 and (as expressed in the psalm) He both “ran and thirsted.”92 For the psalm passage in question reads:
(I have become) like a tumbling wall or a tottering fence.
Nevertheless, they have rejected my price!
I ran and thirsted.93
He thirsts for the conversion of human hearts. And, figuratively, He ran, hastening to achieve the remission of our sins.
For He had absorbed the venom of the ancient serpent, and had willingly drank from the font of the enemy—though it was overflowing with bitterness and gall.94 He died for the wicked and impious, He adopted those who had hitherto been rebellious and recalcitrant as His children, and He poured out an abundance of blessings upon the utterly ungrateful.
Nevertheless, when the people heard Christ declare His thirst, there were a few of them who were moved to some meagre degree of humanity, and whose callous hearts were somewhat mollified. But this was only in their own wayward and blind manner, and hence it was that they offered Him not pure water, but only foul and acrid vinegar. These were the very same people who had abandoned Him when He had spoken of the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. For they had on that occasion similarly misinterpreted His meaning in a perverse and impious manner, deeming Him to have spoken “a hard word.” This was because they had taken His words in a literal, worldly, and fleshly sense.95
The word of God is indeed a “hard word” for those who interpret it falsely! Thus it is for all those who stubbornly refuse to perceive the sacred mysteries and heavenly truths which our faith contains. For these mysteries, which the words of Christ express, are not to be received with the vain intelligence of the flesh and the world, but to be contemplated with the purer wisdom of the Spirit.
But Christ does not react with indignation or wrath at the callousness and foolhardiness of the people. On the contrary, He provides us with a paradigm of perfect patience. He beseeches, rather than reproaches; He pleads, rather than demands; He loves, rather than exacts vengeance and retribution. In doing this, He illuminates the blindness of the people, so that the human race could at last arise and free itself from its servile thralldom to sin and the shadowy quagmire of error. In this way, the eternal splendor of the divine Truth shone forth in all its heavenly radiance!
When Jesus exclaimed “I thirst!” He might be said metaphorically to have struck a loud drum before spiritual doors which had been firmly closed, and endeavored to open the ears which had been rendered deaf to God’s love. With His outstretched arms on the cross, He played (in a figurative sense) upon a ten-stringed lyre, by whose mystical tones the truths of the Old and the New Testaments were brought into perfect and resonant harmony. In the mellifluous tones of this spiritual music, He summoned sinners to repentance and softened obdurate hearts, in the manner in which a snake charmer uses a sweet melody to render docile and tranquil the deadly asp or the maleficent cobra. Thus it was that many of those who had formerly been detractors then became worshippers, and many of the godless were converted to true piety.
But though Jesus showed patience rather than wrath, from the cross, there were those who sought to apply to His sacred mouth the harsh bitterness of vinegar in a sponge placed upon a rod. They thereby sought to pollute the Savior, the font of mercy, with the venom of their own vindictiveness. But, O wicked ones, Christ will not touch your goblet of iniquity; He will not taste the sour wine brewed in the cesspits of Sodom and Gomorrah!
For He is the font from which clear, living water flows, the crystalline streams of which shall well up to eternal life. This holy font is infinite and shall never run dry, nor does it need refreshing from any external source. Rather, this is the source from which you should draw, O reader! For it will fill you with celestial sweetness, and refresh you with its pure and limpid waters. And not only that, but it will extinguish the burning coals of lust within and quench the searing flames of ungoverned desire.
My friends, it is for this alone that Christ really thirsts—that verdant charity may bloom within your heart. He yearns that it should grow to its fullest height and most sublime perfection, like the flourishing palm tree, or like the lofty cedar of Lebanon!96 This pure font, the Savior of the world, pours forth no galling acridity and no harmful poisons. Although He is mocked and derided, He will not change His sweetness into bitterness, nor shall He change His love into vengefulness. Blood and water both flow forth from His holy side—water, for the washing away of the stain of the sins of the world, and blood, as an everlasting testament of His life-giving death.
The Holy Trinity Itself, gloriously enthroned in heaven, presents testimony to Christ’s love, which thirsts for our redemption. It is the Son who justifies, the Spirit who sanctifies, and the Father who glorifies; and all of our justice, sanctity, and glory thus comes down to us from above. The testimony of God (which is greater than any human testimony) commends, teaches, and confirms these gifts of grace in us. And the Spirit, the water, and the blood each bear witness to this marvel; and, truly, these Three are One.97
In the Spirit, we are vivified and imbued with vigorous life; in the water, we are cleansed; and in the blood, we are made glorious and divine! The enemies of Jesus had said, “Let His blood be upon our heads, and upon those of our offspring.”98 They spoke in malice, but their words may be repeated by us with a quite different and pious intention, and with a mystical sense. For by His blood falling upon us, we enter the mystery of His death to share with Him in the glory of the resurrection.
Drink deeply, O reader, from the chalice of His passion! For this is not a cup of horror, but rather the pure nectar of mercy, the healing dew of clemency. Drink copiously therefrom the balm of love, which is the veritable elixir of life eternal! Yes, just as Christ thirsted so ardently for our salvation upon the cross, let us thirst now no less sincerely for His divine mercy and for the saving balm of His most precious blood.
Saint Bonaventure’s Prayer
O thirst most life-giving, desirous of our friendship:
O penetrating thirst, shattering the sinful desires of the heart!
Lord, grant that I may thirst always for You,
And that I may burn with this holy thirst!
But may I fly from all depraved thirsts and all wicked longings.
May I transfer these sinful desires to You, who are the font of salvation!
May I draw from this font the waters of eternal life, And drink forever of the glorious vision of God
In my true heavenly homeland. Amen.99
Saint Bonaventure’s Hymn
By the cross’s weight oppressed,
And by burning thirst distressed,
Jesus, whom did scorners fierce
Beat and mock, deride and pierce!Tortures nameless did He carry;
To endure, though, scorned to tarry,
This—behold!—is love’s true price,
Passion’s highest sacrifice.Honor, yes, is due to Him—
Lord of Love, and star-throned King—
He who through His bitter pain
Life immortal did obtain.Praise and glory to the Son,
Scorned and sold, betrayed and shunned:
Thus died Christ to save the lost,
Paid in tears our sorrow’s cost.100
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85 “I thirst.”
86 From Bonaventure’s Vitis Mystica.
87 Matthew 27:34.
88 See Jeremiah 2:21.
89 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
90 From Arnold of Bonneval’s Tractatus de Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
91 Psalm 61:4.
92 Psalm 61:5.
93 Psalm 61:4–5.
94 This is a reference to Psalm 41:1, “As a deer longs for fonts of water.” In the ancient and medieval times, it was believed that it was the custom of deer to eat venomous snakes, and then to experience a burning thirst. Many commentaries on this psalm by the Church Fathers reflect this belief.
95 See John 6:56–61.
96 See Psalm 91:13.
97 See 1 John 5:8.
98 Matthew 27:25.
99 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
100 From Bonaventure’s Officium de Passione Domini.