“In their thirst and hunger, they grumbled.”

Jesus’ encounter with the multitudes over the Sea of Galilee, could serve as a metaphor for our great thirst and hunger. We languish for the living Water (Bread). It satisfies and refreshes. It revives and cleanses. We die without it. This is our condition: we thirst, we hunger. Existential thirst (hunger) launches all our efforts. The thirst for fullness is behind every move we make. In our relationship to the Christ, it is not only a matter of drink; it is a matter of food as well. It is manna. Our endless thirst is what makes us work so hard at physical life: producing, earning, consuming. Thirst, too, excites our spiritual longings, our proving and testing, our fretful striving for virtue, even for perfection.

But our thirst is so great we can get lost in it and ignore the very truth that could satisfy.

That great truth is God’s thirst for us, even in our sin. When we see the full mystery of Lent and Easter, we realize that, as great as our dry thirst and wide yearning may be, it is God’s eternal hunger, thirst for us, for our faith, our trust, our love, that is the central mystery of being. Jesus is the stream of love between God and us. We are invited to drink of the mystery, this outpouring of love, embodied in Jesus, the thirst of God in us. The story of the feeding of multitudes, interprets for us the fundamental nature of our relationship to God. We are nothing without God. God is our drink. God is our sustenance.