Divine Thirst and the Ardor of Divine Love

From Mother Teresa's Secret Fire (discussed here) comes more about God's thirst for us being a sign of his divine love. This is deep stuff well worth contemplating. However, Father Langford makes it as easy as possible for us to understand. Here's a bit to give you an idea of what that might mean.

St. Catherine of Siena, the great mystic and Doctor of the Church, shared many of Mother Teresa's intuitions regarding the divine thirst. She speaks of the crucified Jesus as "slain with such fire of love ... as seems insatiable. Yet still he thirsts, as if saying: 'I have greater ardor and desire and thirst for our salvation than I am able to show you, [even] with my Passion.'" From her own mystical experience, Catherine could only describe the God she had encountered with her own analogies: as "pazzo d'amore; ebbro d'amore" -- as "crazed with love, drunk with love."

If we derive anything from the ardor of divine love described in Scripture, in the Song of Songs, in the spousal language of the Old Testament, or in the role of Jesus as Bridegroom of Israel, it is that in some inconceivable way, God not only loves us, but he is also in love with us. This profound mystery lies at the core of Mother Teresa's discovery. There is a definite eros in God's love for us, which must be correctly understood (as we shall see) but not discarded, lest we reduce divine love to mere benevolence. His love revealed in Scripture, even in the Old Testament, is a "passionate" love, a love Mother Teresa fully understood, appreciated, and made bold to proclaim: The boy and girl who fall in love with each other, that love is "I thirst." You have to experience it. Same thing -- we come to that conviction ... His love is thirst.

When we look at Jesus during His humiliating Passion & death we ask -- why all this? for what purpose. ... No one, not even Jesus could have gone through all that humiliating suffering if He was not in love."

This ardent love is not only the domain of the Son, who shares our humanity; its source is the Father. It is staggering to realize that the Father loves all of mankind with the same love, with the same magnitude and the same intensity, with which he loves his divine Son. Mother Teresa understood that it is God's nature to love this way, to love us with the entirety of his being, and that he cannot love us any less. For this reason she so often came back to the word "infinite," to clarify the nature of his thirst. "Jesus is God therefore His love, His thirst is infinite. ... [We are called to] quench this infinite thirst of a God made Man."