Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

"Give me to drink."

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this year in vites all Christians to drink at Jacob’s well.

How many times, when I was a child, driven by thirs t, did I go to the well to fetch water for me, my family, and our animals. And in summer, there was n ever enough water. Even the garden, with all its vegetables and flowers, was thirsty!

But now I would like to speak of another thirst, th e thirst for unity of all Jesus’ brothers and siste rs, the thirst for communion among all Christians. We n eed to have the Lord increase within us the thirst for unity. We have need of this thirst so that our prayer may be heard. It is the thirst that drives us to say, “Give us to drink.” But if we are not thirsty, what good is it to go to the well in search of water?

Take a look at what the Israelites do in the desert at Kadesh. They are very thirsty. There is not enough water for the entire community: neither for them nor for their animals. They are afraid they will die of thirst. Their faith is weak. Their thirst is great.

The Israelites rebel, because they want water. The y fight against Moses and Aaron. They want water to drink; they care only about wate r and nothing else! They fight and they gain victory in spite of their weak faith. Let us admire the extraordinary strength of the peo ple of Israel’s thirst that overcomes resistance of God! Oh, if only Christians had this same thirst!

Now let us take a look at the psalmist athirst who addresses God like a dry, weary land without water. We can see him experiencing desert and drou ght. His soul is a dried-up spring. His entire life is directed to God because he himself doesn’t have what he needs to live: water. And it is God who brings life to the desert of his soul.

And now let us listen to the thirst of Jesus on the Cross. We Christians, we have need of the thirst of Jesus, of His thirst. Not so much the thirst he experiences at Jacob’s we ll, when around noon-time, tired from his journey, he requests of the Samaritan woman, “Give me to drink,” but rather the thirst that he experiences on the Cross, when at the end of his li fe, once all has been accomplished, he says, “I thirst.”

This thirst is the doorway into the mystery of comm union and of unity among all Christians. He made himself thirst to quench our thirst. Jesus is thirsty for our thirst. If we are truly thirsty, let us go to Jacob’s well.

He is that well and rivers of living water flow fro m his side.

Fr. Celeste Pianez ze, A.A.
Provincial delegate of Europe to promote Assumptio nists as “Men of Communion”
Moscow, January 18, 2015