She learned that God not only accepts us with all our misery, but that he longs for us, “thirsts” for us, with all the intensity of his divine heart, no matter who we are or what we have done.
But how can God “thirst” for us if there is no lack in God? While thirst can imply lack, it also has another sense. In Mother Teresa’s lexicon, thirst signifies deep, intense desire. Rather than indicating lack, the symbol of divine thirst points to the mystery of God’s freely chosen longing for man. Simply put, though nothing in God needs us, everything in God wants us — deeply and intensely, as he shows throughout Scripture.
Mother Teresa’s insights reveal something important, even essential, in the depths of God’s being. Mother Teresa insists that the thirst of Christ reveals something not only about Jesus, but about God himself. Jesus’ thirst points us toward a great mystery in the very bosom of the Godhead — what Mother Teresa describes as “the depths of God’s infinite longing to love and be loved.”13 As ardent a statement as this is, her insights are confirmed by no less a source than the Fathers of the Church. The great St. Augustine would write that “God thirsts to be thirsted for by man” (see Appendix Three for a collection of patristic quotes on the divine thirst). In our own day, Pope Benedict XVI would affirm that “Christ’s thirst is an entrance-way to the mystery of God.”14
The mystery of God’s thirst for us was the one great light Mother Teresa held high in the night, hers and ours. This was the banner she raised for the poor and suffering of Calcutta and beyond. It was as witness to this message that Jesus commissioned her, soon after the experience of the train, to “Be My light”15 — and this she would energetically do, in season and out of season. She would spend her whole life proclaiming the light of divine love — even when her words fell silent, her hands spoke more eloquently still.
The “Varanasi Letter”
It took many years for Mother Teresa to feel less uneasy in speaking about her experience of the train — a grace she at first felt unworthy to bear, and unable to express. Though she had at times made passing references to September 10, it was not until the 1990s that she began to speak more clearly and openly of the “light and love”16 she had received on the train.
I personally had the chance to witness her gradual change of heart, late in 1992, just five years before her death. Mother Teresa was eighty-three at the time, and had already suffered numerous bouts with heart disease. During my stay in Calcutta that year, I had gone one afternoon with another member of our community, to visit with Mother Teresa in Mother House. While we were with her in the parlor, the conversation unexpectedly turned to September 10, to her experience on the train, and to the importance of the message she had received that day.
To our surprise, she began to speak animatedly of Jesus’ thirst, of what she had experienced and understood that day, and of how life-changing it could be. She kept coming back to how different the lives of her Sisters and her poor would be if only they drew closer to, and took more seriously, the reality of Jesus’ thirst. Encouraged by our enthusiasm and primed by our questions, she went on speaking for the better part of an hour — about the beauty of this message, about the power of her encounter to heal and transform, and how all of us could share in this grace.
Though we may never know what prompted Mother Teresa’s unprecedented outpouring that afternoon, she may have felt interiorly freed to do so by Pope John Paul II’s Lenten letter, released just prior to our conversation with her.17 For the first time, the thirst of Jesus had been mentioned in a Church document, and in Mother Teresa’s same terms and language. She had been deeply moved by the letter, and spoke of it repeatedly. Touched and grateful for this implicit affirmation of her insights, and for helping her to lift up the light of the divine longing, she immediately wrote to John Paul to thank him. This exchange, and the fresh enthusiasm that John Paul’s letter had generated in her, had been the larger context behind what we had just heard her so uncharacteristically, yet so eagerly, share.
When she had finished speaking, Father Gary and I both urged her to share what she had said with her entire order, perhaps in one of her general letters, recording this for posterity. Despite her initial misgivings, she agreed to go upstairs and write down what she remembered. Since she had been speaking spontaneously, the writing turned out to be more difficult than she had foreseen. But with the help of a few memory jogs (she asked that I jot down the main points of her conversation as best I could), over the coming weeks she was able to complete the task.
Her conversation that Calcutta afternoon became the seed for her “Varanasi Letter,” the end result of her efforts at recording her conversation. The letter was so named after the city on the Ganges where she visited on March 25, 1993, the feast of the Annunciation to Mary — the date she wished to affix to this letter that, for the first time, would speak openly of her experience and her message. Her insistence on that date for her letter would honor the original “message” announcing the fullness of divine love given in Jesus, revealed to Mary by the angel Gabriel on this day.
After Mother Teresa’s arrival in Rome some weeks later, she continued going over her letter, editing and revising the text until she was satisfied. Though she attempted repeatedly to write it out longhand, the arthritic pain in her hands did not allow her to finish. She ended up handing her still marked-up draft to her Sisters, to be typed and duplicated. Its more salient passages are reproduced below.
Mother Teresa’s “Varanasi Letter” (Excerpts)
“My children, you don’t have to be different for Jesus to love you….”
Mother Teresa
25 March 1993
Varanasi, India
My dearest Children ~
Jesus wants me to tell you again, how much is the love He has for each one of you — beyond all that you can imagine. I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus — one to one — you and Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel — but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living Jesus — not from books, but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you?
Ask for the grace, He is longing to give it. Never give up this daily intimate contact with Jesus as a real living person — not just an idea.
How can we last even one day living our life without hearing Jesus say “I love you” — impossible. Our soul needs that as much as the body needs to breathe the air. If not, prayer is dead — meditation is only thinking. Jesus wants you each to hear Him — speaking in the silence of your heart.
Be careful of all that can block that personal being in touch with the living Jesus. The hurts of life, and sometimes your own mistakes — [may] make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really clinging to you. This is a danger for all of you. And so sad, because it is completely opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you.
Not only He loves you, even more — He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. Even if you are not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes — He is the one who always accepts you.
My children, you don’t have to be different for Jesus to love you. Only believe — You are precious to Him. Bring all you are suffering to His feet — only open your heart to be loved
