“I thirst” 

In the chapel in which we celebrated Mass today, the words, “I thirst”  were affixed to the wall next to the crucifix.  These were some of the final words uttered by the Lord as he hung upon the cross.  With arms outstretched, Jesus spoke of the very human need to satisfy physical thirst.  But, his words also revealed the heart of God’s plan of salvation, a divine thirst that each person lean into God’s loving and merciful embrace.

We spent the rest of the day attempting to satisfy thirst - human and divine.  We met the Reiser Relief water truck in Cite Solei, a portion of Port-au-Prince that many regard as the poorest area in the world.   Most of us agreed with that assessment.  The conditions were horrendous.  One of our group described the conditions as “subhuman”.   The truck honked the horn, alerting the people that the water truck had arrived.  The people, mostly women and children, arrived at the truck with various size buckets to collect water.  Several girls and women picked up buckets full of water, placed the buckets on their heads, and walked to their homes.   They then hustled back to the truck and repeated this routine several times.  The team helped others carry the buckets to their homes, which gave us a different look into their lives.  Hopefully, the water in these buckets went toward satisfying the human thirst for at least one day.

Our team was also privileged to participate in God’s plan of announcing His divine thirst for them, especially the children.  They flocked to us, some with dirty clothes and some with no clothes at all.  They raced to us, wanting to be held, to be embraced, to be loved.  What a joy to welcome them into our arms, sometimes a child in each arm and one on the back.  God was thirsting for them and used our outstretched arms to reveal that thirst, that they would know of His intense, personal and eternal love for them.

But, God was also revealing his thirst for the team members.   The children approached us with outstretched arms, inviting us into their embrace, into His embrace.  At that moment, amidst such difficult conditions, we needed to be reminded of God’s thirst for us, of his intense, personal and eternal love for us.  We needed to lean into his merciful embrace, which was accomplished through the outstretched arms of the poorest of children.