The 7 Last Words and the Nicene Creed: ‘I Thirst’

National Catholic Register, 17 April 2025

The fifth word from the cross points to Christ’s real bodily suffering — and his divine thirst for our salvation — as foretold in Scripture and confessed in the Creed.

“After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I thirst.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth” (John 19:28-29).

The fifth word from the cross is the shortest: “I thirst.”

It is the only time that Jesus speaks of his physical pain and suffering. The sufferings were intense. Along the Via Crucis, we mark those three falls of Jesus. The suffering and the pain under the weight of the cross were pushing Jesus down. We know that his passion took an enormous physical toll, because after Jesus had died on the cross, and the report is given to Pilate, he is surprised that Jesus has died so quickly. It was possible for people to hang on a cross for days. The debilitating cruelty of the Passion — the scourging, the crowning with thorns — had already weakened Jesus.

The fifth word speaks of that. The Passion was not some kind of elaborate play, but real in its physical pain and suffering. It is a bodily act, this redemptive crucifixion. It is a particularly cruel method of execution. Jesus suffers: He falls. He bleeds. He thirsts. That suffering, sweating, bleeding, thirsty body of Jesus is not an abstraction or a theological principle, it is a flesh-and-blood man in agony. The Nicene Creed summarizes all that very briefly:

He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.

A lot is contained in those two short lines. By definition, the creed is a summary; it is not meant to detail or to explain, but simply to record that that suffering took place. In the simple words “he suffered” the whole of the Passion is included.

The same is true from the fifth word. “I thirst” contains the whole of the Passion.

The physical sufferings have another purpose. They manifest on his body the consequences of sin. We read the prophet Isaiah in Holy Week on that very point (Isaiah 53:2-5):

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Those wounds are visible. They also point toward the invisible.

St. Paul explains that “for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). What does that mean? It cannot mean that the Father considered Jesus to be a sinner. It means that the One without sin was made to show us what sin looks like.

Sin makes us less — it reduces us; it strips us of our dignity. It may even make us unrecognizable. Those physical sufferings of Jesus — the bruises on his face when he was struck, the blood on his back, the wounds and the tears from the scourging, the crown of thorns piercing his head, the thirst — all show us what sin does. It is the visible image of invisible vice.

Sometimes we see the consequences of sin. Not always, but sometimes. There are certain sins that leave a physical residue. There are certain indulgences that damage our health. There are other sins where the consequences are observable.

A student who is very lazy and does not complete his assignments will see his grades fall. Someone who is reckless or foolish in managing his finances will not be able to pay his bills; perhaps he will even hear the cries of his hungry children.

There are many sins where the consequences are not easy to see. All sin has consequences, but they are not all visible. When we look at Jesus on the cross, we see the consequences. Our crucifixes can be artistically beautiful, but they are meant to remind us of the ugliness of sin.

On the Via Crucis, Jesus became “one from whom people hide their faces.” We should feel a similar revulsion at sin.

The prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in Christ crucified. The fifth word tells us that the thirst of Jesus was “in order to fulfill the Scripture.”

We hear that often in the Gospel accounts of the Passion. The Scriptures are fulfilled. In the fourth word of the cross — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — Jesus was quoting Psalm 22. He will quote Psalm 31 in the sixth word: Into your hands, I commend my Spirit.

In this fifth word, Jesus returns to Psalm 22 again: “My strength is dried up like a potsherd. And my tongue sticks to my jaws” (22:15). It is an image of advanced thirst, of dehydration; the tongue sticks within the mouth. Psalm 22 links the fourth and the fifth words.

In Psalm 69, there is another relevant prophecy:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am wearing out. I am wearying, rather, with my crying out. My throat is parched.

The biblical image of the great waters, the image of the flood, means death. In the biblical world, the deep waters were the realm of death. We see that vividly in the Exodus, as the children of Israel march through the waters to the right and to the left of them. Their deliverance comes whilst surrounded by death.

Psalm 69 speaks about death, the overflowing waters, and the soul crying out to God to be saved. Such is the crying out that the throat is parched; it is dry. This seems to be a contradiction; the waters are flowing over, and yet the throat is dry. The exterior is saturated; the interior is dying. The crying out to be saved from death parches the throat.

Psalm 69 continues at verse 20:

Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair; I look for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none; they gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

Jesus has been reproached. His heart has been broken by betrayal and abandonment. None of his judges showed him pity. Comforters are few. He thirsted, and they gave him sour wine to drink.

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