“The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2560).

“I Thirst”: Using Our Gifts to Quench Christ’s Thirst

In a message by Pope St. John Paul II for Lent 1993, the great pope called the Church to reflect on Jesus’ words, “I thirst” (John 19:28) and “Give me a drink” (John 4:7). In these words, he wrote, ‘we hear a cry from the poor, especially those who did not have access to clean water’. In a subsequent letter to the Missionaries of Charity, St. Teresa of Calcutta (then simply known as Mother Teresa) elaborated on this message:

“‘I thirst’ is something much deeper than Jesus just saying ‘I love you.’ Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you — you can’t begin to know who He wants to be [for] you. Or who He wants you to be for Him.”

This Lent, Catholic Women in Business invites you to reflect with us on how Jesus thirsts for each one of us and how we can quench His thirst — through prayer, through sacrifice, through loving His children who are most in need (and there are so many this Lent in particular!). In our content this season, we’ll be exploring how, as Catholic professionals, we can begin to understand “who He wants to be” for us, “who He wants [us] to be for Him,” and how we can share His great love for us all with everyone we encounter.

I was asked recently if I’d made work an idol, and the question sent me spinning into reflection.

During my 20s, due to my untreated anxiety disorder, I had a period of time when I dreaded the weekends, because they meant leaving the office, where I felt valued, and going home, where I was alone and afraid to reach out to new people. Work became central to my life and my identity.

I’ve had a moderately successful career so far; I’m good at my job, and I enjoy what I do. But it took becoming a wife and mother (our daughter is due in June) — and that question, “Is work an idol?” — for me to reconsider how I’d prioritized my life and forged my identity over the last decade.

Our Misplaced Thirst

It is often difficult to identify where we have idols in our lives, because so often, we make them out of good things. Work, marriage, motherhood, volunteer work, activism … these things are good and valuable and important. But when we place them above God, not only does it hurt us, but it makes us incapable of fulfilling our roles as worker, wife, mother, and volunteer effectively. And it leads us down a dangerous and damaging path.

A recent Acorns article discussed the unemployment crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on people’s sense of identity and well-being. In it, a professor of sociology is quoted as saying that in the United States, “work is the single most important way of proving your worth.” As a result, people who have lost their jobs “talk about depression, they talk about shame, they talk about self-hatred,” according to another sociologist.

What happens when we thirst for the wrong thing? What happens when we create idols out of anything but God? We wrap up too much of our identity in our work. We see unemployment creating financial hardship and the valid emotional challenges of being out of work — but we also see it creating an identity crisis and self-hatred. We see newly stay-at-home moms who don’t know who they are anymore without their job, because they’ve been told their job is who they are. We see people neglect their families and their health for the sake of work. We see the constant struggle for “work/life balance” without any concept of what that balance should like.

In short, we see the current workforce (and out-of-work-force) in the United States, a huge number of people thirsting for something they can’t find and trying to quench that thirst by making work an idol.

What Do We Really Thirst for?

My primary spiritual reading this Lent is “Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation,” by Cardinal Anders Arborelius, O.C.D., a Carmelite priest, the first Cardinal from Sweden, and the first Swedish bishop since the reformation. I’ve been drawn to the Carmelite saints ever since I discovered St. Thérèse in high school and made her my Confirmation saint. I’m drawn to their spirituality, despite the fact that quiet and contemplation do not come naturally to me — or maybe because of it.

In the early chapters of “Carmelite Spirituality,” Cardinal Arborelius writes about a gift we are given in Baptism: an invitation to “participation in the very act of adoration taking place within the Trinity, in which the Son is always giving glory to His Father.” We are called to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). That call sounds so challenging when we are preoccupied with daily occupations. But, according to Cardinal Arborelius, the truth is that God is thirsting for that constant prayer, and so He gives us plenty of opportunities to live that way.

Prayer is the recitation of the “Our Father,” as taught to us by our Lord Himself. Prayer is the Rosary or the Liturgy of the Hours. Prayer is “a surge of the heart … a simple look turned toward heaven … a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy” (St. Thérèse). Prayer is listening in quiet. Prayer is offering up our work, whatever it may be.

We were created with a thirst for God. He made us to seek Him, but we can only quench that thirst if we order our lives in the right way. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides,” Matthew (6:33) tells us. By quenching our thirst in God and God alone, we can seek — and find! — the kingdom of God. Our work will follow suit.

Taryn Oesch DeLong, managing editor of Catholic Women in Business,is an editor and writer in Raleigh, North Carolina. She and her husband are expecting their first child, a daughter, in June. Passionate about supporting women in work, in life, and in health, she is assistant editor and contributing writer at FemCatholic, a contributor at Live Today Well Co., and a fertility awareness advocate. When she’s not helping writers craft stories and writing her own nonfiction and fiction, you'll find Taryn reading Jane Austen and drinking a cup of Earl Grey tea, playing the flute or the piano, or volunteering. You can follow Taryn on Instagram and Twitter @tarynmdelong, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, or on her blog.