Do you thirst for relationship with the Lord?
When writers of the Old Testament want to talk about God’s love for God’s people, they commonly use language that refers to the ways their needs are met. All you who are thirsty, come to the water! Isaiah tells a desert people for whom food and water are often a struggle to acquire. But in fact, God is providing them with something they have not before realized in its fullness: God’s love for them and the infinite identity that love provides – the only requirement being that the people must thirst for God in order to open to God’s work in them. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation, the canticle from Isaiah proclaims, giving thanks to the Lord and acclaiming his name, in gratitude for that relationship to which he calls us, thanks to the everlasting covenant promised to David, and to us.
The eschatological banquet requires that we thirst for relationship with God; our identity comes from that shared relationship, for the relationship entails a shift in how we see ourselves and others. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus chooses to be baptized in the Jordan by John, freely accepting to be one with the people, entering into the fullness of our reality, that he might make us new. Jesus needs to be baptized if he is to embrace our humanity fully, for all time, that we might ultimately share in divine life with him. When John the Baptist shows up, the people are thirsting for this relationship; by entering into our lives, Jesus allows us to enter in turn, through baptism, into his life. Baptism is thus, for us, a participation in that relationship cemented when we accept Jesus Christ who, as 1 John tells us, came through water and blood, that we might become one with him and reveal his love to all.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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