Hunger and Thirstvort-2014-04-16

Hello everyone and welcome to The Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I’m Michael Voris.

To show the near total deprivation Our Blessed Lord suffered during His Passion week, we hear that at the beginning of the week he was hungry and at the end he was thirsty.

The day after He rode into Jerusalem, he went to the fig tree looking for some fruit because He was hungry. Even though its leaves were in bloom, it provided no fruit – so he cursed it.

This account has much for us to learn from. First and the most obvious is that Our Lord was hungry – a very small anticipation of awaited Him at the end of the week.

But he was also hungry in His soul – starved for souls which He desired and who would refuse Him His Divine nourishment. Notice the tree has the APPEARANCE of being fine – its leaves in full bloom.

But beneath the appearance and full leafing, Our Lord finds nothing and curses it – may you never bear fruit again.

If it were possible, think of this account from the perspective of the tree. You are looked to by all and understood by all as a source of nourishment and refreshment.

You bear fruit not for yourself specifically, but to give life and sustenance to others. Bringing forth fruit requires the expending of much energy – conversion of nutrients in the dirt to nutrients in your sap. The conversion of sunlight into food for yourself to fuel the process.

Then of course the conversion of all this effort into actual fruit. Then after all you have done, the sum of all your efforts are violently ripped from your branches and made off with for someone else’s delight.

Yet, this is why you exist – to spend yourself in the service of others. And then one day, strolling right in front of you is the God who made you. This is your judgment day.

He stretches out His Divine hand – and finds you severely wanting. When the moment comes, you are lacking what is needed – and your time has come and passed. Sentence ispassed. May you never bear fruit again!

When the Creator comes – you must be prepared. Our Lord is incessant about this aspectof being a disciple of His. He repeats it in earnest under various forms His last week on earth – the parable of the talents, the five wise virgins and the five foolish ones.

As he approached Jerusalem the day before, He wept over the city – how nearly inconsolable must those Divine tears have been – prefigured by Rachel mourning for Her

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children who were no more.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you would not have it so!

Behold your house will be abandoned, desolate.

Our Lord also said - Yes, a time is coming when your enemies will raise fortifications allround you, when they will encircle you and hem you in on every side; they will dash youand the children inside your walls to the ground; they will leave not one stone standing onanother within you, because you did not recognize the moment of your visitation.'

The hungry Christ, starving for souls, cannot brook forever, being deliberately kept hungry. His love is too great, too anxious to embrace those who will embrace Him. Therefore, walls must be broken down and no stone can be left upon another that keeps Our Lord from souls for which His Divine appetite longs.

This was the beginning of His Passion Week – hunger. At the end, on the cross, it was thirst. A God who spent Himself so completely that he went from pain to pain. And it is fitting that he advanced from hunger to thirst.

A man can endure hunger for long stretches – He had in fact already done that immediately following His baptism when He was driven as the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity into the desert by the Third Person at the direction of the First Person.

Yes, hunger a man can endure – but thirst, a man cannot long bear. He hungered at the beginning and throughout Holy Week – but it was the intense thirst, the burning infinite longing for souls – a thirst that would remain unquenched as He saw into the future those many who would reject Him still.

A thirst increased in intensity owing to his great loss of blood in the garden the night before as He sweat blood, not so much in dread of His own imminent passion, which he of course was, but also of the dread He felt for all those souls He saw all in a single instant who would reject Him down thru the ages.

Father, if it be possible let this cup pass Me by. He did not want to drink from that chalice. In fact, drawing from THIS chalice would actually in a certain sense bring His thirst into greater focus. The more he was to draw, the greater His thirst would become.

So as he hung there, fastened to wood, suspended between heaven and earth – crying out in thirst for souls, His executioners gave Him bitter gall to drink – the last measure of dregs as He exited this world.

At the beginning of the week, he hungered and was not satisfied. And now at the end, he thirsted and was given gall.

But the night before, in the Upper Room, there was that one beam of hope, that one small

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hint, that it would not be forever a hungry and thirsting God. I tell you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine, UNTIL I drink it new with you, in my Father’s kingdom.

We must each cease to be a source of hunger and thirst for Our Lord and learn to become sources of pleasure and fulfillment – satisfying His Divine appetites of hunger and thirst.

In this Holy Week, let us present ourselves to Him and repeat His words back to Him – Lord, eat my flesh, and find in me, water to quench Your Divine thirst.

GOD Love you.

I’m Michael Voris

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