“Thirst and Desire”
“The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” (Gen 3:6) Adam and Eve’s desire for the forbidden fruit, promising wisdom, is the beginning not only of the Lenten Sundays, but of the entire human history of sin and redemption. This gives us a hint into one of the richest and most complicated human realities: the world of desires. Christian tradition, exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas, has seen human desires as inherently linked to the pursuit of goodness and fulfillment. All desires stem from a natural inclination toward achieving happiness associated with the ultimate good, or God. But this inclination must be guided in humans by reason, and it can be problematic when we desire lesser goods as if they were ultimate.
Scripture is no stranger to this tension of desire. It cautions us against those rooted in the world while encouraging holy longings such as for wisdom, discipline, and fulfillment in God. From the very beginning, after the Fall, the disorder of the desires appears as a trap: “your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16) God warned Eve. It is not that desires are always bad, but they need to be discerned: “From the fruit of their words good persons eat good things, but the desire of the treacherous is for wrongdoing […] The appetite of the lazy craves, and gets nothing, while the appetite of the diligent is richly supplied” teaches us the book of proverbs (Prov 13:2,4).
A clear metaphor for human desire is the physical experience of thirst which is at the center of today’s readings. Human thirst and human desire both arise from a real lack within us and propel us outward toward what can satisfy us: water for the body, goodness for the soul. Today, in the book of Exodus, the pressing thirst of the Israelites will be an occasion to discover that their hearts were not fully seeking the Lord: “In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?”” (Ex 17:3). They tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” (v.7) In the Gospel, the Samaritan woman is also thirsty not just for water, but for some kind of fulfilment that she tried unsuccessfully to quench in her five husbands. At the well there is an encounter between the thirst of the woman and the one of Jesus Christ as the preface says during the Mass: “when he asked the Samaritan woman for water to drink, he had already created the gift of faith within her and so ardently did he thirst for her faith, that he kindled in her the fire of divine love.”
Desire for divine love should be the thirst that moves us like the Book of Psalms prays: “As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God?” (Ps 42:2-3) “O God, you are my God, it is you I seek! For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts, in a land parched, lifeless, and without water” (Ps 63:2) This desire of the heart corresponds to an invitation from God Himself to come to Him: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat; Come, buy grain without money, wine and milk without cost!” (Is 55:1)
This desire to go to the source of happiness, God, is not in contrast to our love for the realities of this world seen as gifts from God. The spring is reached through the streams
that flow from it. However, every desire needs to be educated, for it runs the risk of becoming an absolute, as the apostle Saint John warns us in his first letter. “Do not
love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.” (1 Jn 2:15-17).
In that sense, some of the commandments align perfectly with the words of St. John. They are meant to set us free as the educate our carnal desires to use desirable things in a proper manner (remember Adam and Eve). “The desire of the flesh”. “You shall not commit adultery” (6th commandment) that includes sins against purity by oneself, other unchaste actions, words, dresses, Internet… The virtue chastity set us free because it frees the heart from the tyranny of disordered impulses and enables a person to love others with integrity, self-mastery, and authentic self-gift.
“The desire of the eyes”. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (9th commandment): impure thoughts. As the beatitudes teach: “Blessed are the clean of heart because they will see God” (Mt 5:8)
“The pride in riches”. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” (10th commandment), which is at the base of the 7th commandment as well: “You shall not steal”. Detachment from greed and envy releases us from slavery to possessions and comparison, allowing us to rest in trustful dependence on God rather than on the insecurity of what we own or lack.
Blessings,
Previous Letters:
March 1, 2026: Transfigured
February 22, 2026: The Law of Freedom
February 15, 2026: In Defense of Marriage
February 8, 2026: Salt and Light
February 1, 2026: Poor Who Enrich
January 25, 2026: Catholic School Education
January 18, 2026: Humbled and Exalted
January 11, 2026: Born and Reborn
January 4, 2026: What’s the Price of a Mass?
December 28, 2025: Families Serving Families
December 21, 2025: Decisions
December 14, 2025: Make Firm
December 7, 2025: Hope and Justice
November 30, 2025: Armor of Light
November 23, 2025: Behold Your King
November 16, 2025: Remember Your Dignity
November 9, 2025: St. Leo and the Cross of Christ
November 2, 2025; Dying in Christ
October 26, 2025: Forgive Us
October 19, 2025: Pray For Us
October 12, 2025: Pillar of Faith
October, 5, 2025: Compendium of the Gospel
September 28, 2025: Failed to Do
September 21, 2025: An Enemy Did This
September 14, 2025: In Hoc Signo
September 7, 2025: My Son Carlo
August 31, 2025: Humility?
August 24, 2025: How Difficult?
August 17, 2025: Politically Incorrect
August 10, 2025: Got Faith?
August 3, 2025: Greed
July 27, 2025: Ask and You Shall Receive
July 20, 2025: The Better Part
July 13, 2025: Who is the Samaritan
July 6, 2025: Joy and Spoons
June 29, 2025: In Fire
June 22, 2025: A Beating Heart in the Tabernacle
June 15, 2025: The Mirror
June 8, 2025: Filled With the Holy Spirit
June 1, 2025: He Loved Us
May 25, 2025: Servant of Your Faith and Joy
May 18, 2025: Leo
May 11, 2025: The Deposit of Faith
May 4, 2025: Costly Mercy
April 27, 2025: Who is Peter?
April 20, 2025: I Make All Things New – Arise!
April 13, 2025: I Make All Things New – To Do My Penance
April 6, 2025: I Make All Things New – I Declared My Sin to You
March 30, 2025: I Make All Things New – I Firmly Resolve
March 23 2025: I Make All Things New – I am Sorry for Offending You
March 16, 2025: I Make All Things New – Examining Your Conscience
March 9, 2025: I Make All Things New
March 2, 2025: Pruning
February 23, 2025: The Anointed of the Lord
February 16, 2025: Be My Valentine
February 9, 2025: Wash Away My Guilt II
February 2, 2025: Wash Away My Guilt I
January 26, 2025: Catholic Education
January 19, 2025: Shall Marry You
January 12, 2025: Called by Name
January 5, 2025: Pilgrims of Hope
December 29, 2024: Priests for the Family
December 22, 2024: Messengers of Joy
December 15, 2024: Blessed Are the Poor
December 8, 2024: Love, Hope and Joy
December 1, 2024: Hope Does Not Disappoint
November 24, 2024: Are You King?
November 17, 2024: Seven Words
November 10, 2024: Tu es Petrus
November 3, 2024: Pray For Those Authority
October 27, 2024: These Are the Feasts
October 20, 2024: Someone Else
October 13, 2024: Be Prudent
October 6, 2024: Project and Dreams II
September 29, 2024: Projects and Dreams I
September 22, 2024: Pastor
September 15, 2024: Take Up Your Cross
September 8, 2024: Guardians of Shared Memory
September 1, 2024: From Their Hearts
August 25, 2024: The Cost of Discipleship
August 18, 2024: For Real?
August 11, 2024: Too Long For You
August 4, 2024: A New Manna
July 28, 2024: Bread of Life
July 21, 2024: Shepherds After My Own Heart
July 14, 2024: Woe to Me…
July 7, 2024: Come and Rest (II)
June 30, 2024: Come and Rest (I)
June 23, 2024: Storms
June 16, 2024: I Will be a Father to You
June 9, 2024: Burning Furnace of Love
June 2, 2024: In the Midst of Him
May 26, 2024: Forever I Will Sing the Goodness of the Lord
May 19, 2024: Through the Holy Spirit
May 12, 2024: The Ark of the Covenant
May 5, 2024: Source and Summit
April 28, 2024: Rejoice Always
April 21, 2024: I Believe in the resurrection of the body Part II
April 14, 2024: I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body Part 1
April 7, 2024: Rich in Mercy
March 31, 2024: Sine Dominico Non Possumus About Sunday
February 11, 2024: I Was Ill and You Cared For Me
February 4, 2024: Why Evil?
January 28, 2024: Catholic Schools Week
January 21, 2024: Attachments
January 14, 2024: The LORD Shines
January 7, 2024: Epiphany 2024
December 31, 2023: A Family of Families
December 25, 2023: New Beginnings
December 17, 2023: Christmas
December 3, 2023: Watch
November 26, 2023: Be Healed
November 19, 2023: Sealed
November 12, 2023: Religious?
