After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said,
I thirst.
All Commentaries on John 19:28 Go To John 19
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. After about three hours. It was at the beginning of the crucifixion that He commended His mother to S. John. The scripture was Psalm 69:22. He said this that He might suffer the further torment of being offered the vinegar. As S. Augustine says, "Ye have not yet done this. Give Me that which ye are yourselves—for ye are full of acidity and bitterness; give Me vinegar, and not wine."
Christ thirsted, because He had neither eaten nor drunken since His supper the night before, and He had moreover poured forth all the moisture and blood in His body, by His scourging and crucifixion. And His most bitter pains also caused Him great thirst; for, as S. Cyril says, "Sorrows enkindle the heat within us, dry up our moisture from its very depths, and burn us up with fiery heat." Hence our jaws are dried up, and are parched with thirst. The words of the Psalmist ( Psalm 22:6) were fulfilled in Christ"s person. The Chancellor of Louvain, when he was dying forty years ago, said in my presence, that he never fully understood those words, as he did when he was himself suffering from like drought and thirst, and thence learned how great the thirst of Christ was. Mystically, Christ thirsted for the salvation of souls. See Bellarmine on "The seven words of Christ on the cross." "God thirsteth to be thirsted for," says Nazianzen in Tetrastichisis, in order that we may insatiably love and desire Him, and say with the Psalmist, "My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God: when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?" Psalm 42:2.
