_I thirst._
Our Lord continues to reveal His own condition, since He, after all, is
the key to all Humanity. If we understand anything of Him,
simultaneously we shall understand ourselves far better.
He has shown us that He can truly be deprived of spiritual consolation;
and the value of this deprivation; now He shows us the value of bodily
deprivation also. And the Paradox for our consideration is that the
Source of all can lose all; that the Creator needs His creation; that He
Who offers us the _water springing up into Life Eternal_ can lack the
water of human life--the simplest element of all. In His Divine
Dereliction He yet continues to be Human.
I. It is very usual, under this Word, to meditate on Christ's thirst for
souls; and this is, of course, a legitimate thought, since it is true
that His whole Being, and not merely one part of it, longed and panted
on the Cross for every object of His desire. Certainly He desired souls!
When does He not?
But it is easy to lose the proportion of truth, if we spiritualize
everything, and pass over, as if unworthy of consideration, His bodily
pain. For this Thirst of the Crucified is the final sum of all the pains
of crucifixion: the physical agony, the fever produced by it, the
torrential sweat, the burning of the sun--all these culminated in the
torment of which this Cry is His expression.
Bodily pain, then, since Jesus not only deigned to suffer it, but to
speak of it, is as much a part of the Divine process as the most
spiritual of derelictions: it is an intense and a vital reality in life.
It is the fashion, at present, to pose as if we were superior to such
things; as if either it were too coarse for our high natures or even
actually in itself evil. The truth is that we are terrified of its
reality and its sting, and seek, therefore, to evade it by every means
in our power. We affect to smile at the old penances of the saints and
ascetics as if we ourselves had risen into a higher state of development
and needed no longer such elementary aids to piety!
Let this Word, then, bring us back to our senses and to the due
proportions of truth. We are body as well as soul; we are incomplete
without the body. The soul is insufficient to itself, the body has as
real a part to play in Redemption as the soul which is its inmate and
should be its mistress. We look for the _redemption of our body_ and the
_Resurrection of the Flesh_, we merit or demerit before God in our soul
for the deeds done in our body.
So was it too with our Lord of His infinite compassion. The _Word was
made Flesh_, dwelt in the Flesh, has assumed that Flesh into heaven.
Further, He suffered in the Flesh and deigned to tell us so; and that He
found that suffering all but intolerable.
II. In a well-known book a Catholic poet[1] describes with a great deal
of power the development of men's nervous systems in these later days,
and warns his readers against a scrupulous terror lest they, who no
longer scourge themselves with briers, should be neglecting a means of
sanctification. He points out, with perfect justice, that men, in these
days, suffer instead in more subtle manners than did those of the Middle
Ages, yet none the less physical; and puts us on our guard lest we
should afflict ourselves too much. Yet we must take care, also, that we
do not fall into the opposite extreme and come to regard bodily pain,
(as has been said) as if it were altogether too elementary for our
refined natures and as if it must have no place in the alchemy of the
spirit. This would be both dangerous and false. _What God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder!_ For, if we once treat body and soul
as ill-matched companions and seek to deal with them apart, instantly
the door is flung open to the old Gnostic horrors of sensualism on the
one side or inhuman mutilation or neglect on the other.
[Footnote 1: Health and Holiness by Francis Thompson.]
The Church, on the other hand, is very clear and insistent that body and
soul make one man as fully as God and Man make one Christ; and she
illustrates and directs these strange co-relations and mutual effects of
these two partners by her steady insistence on such things as Fasting
and Abstinence. And the saints are equally clear and insistent. There
never yet has been a single soul whom the Church has raised to her
altars in whose life bodily austerity in some form has not played a
considerable part. It is true that some have warned us against excess;
but what warnings and what excess! "Be moderate," advises St. Ignatius,
that most reasonable and moderate of all the saints. "Take care that you
do not break any bones with your iron scourge. God does not wish that!"
Pain, then, has a real place in our progress. Who that has suffered can
ever doubt it again?
Let us consider, therefore, under this Word of Christ, whether our
attitude to bodily pain is what God would have it to be. There are two
mistakes that we may be committing. Either we may fear it too
little--meet it, that is to say, with Pagan stoicism instead of with
Christianity--or we may fear it too much. _Despise not the chastening_,
on one side, _or faint_ on the other. It is surely the second warning
that is most needed now. For pain had a real place in Christ's programme
of life. He fasted for forty days at the beginning of His Ministry, and
He willed every shocking detail of the Praetorium and Calvary at the
end. He told us that _His Spirit willed it_ and, yet more kindly, that
_His Flesh was weak_. He revealed, then, that He really suffered and
that He willed it so.... _I thirst._