souls and therefore he panted to give himself wholly to us by his death. This was his thirst, wrote St. Laurence Justinian: “He thirsted for us, and desired to give himself to us.”1 St. Basil of Seleucia says, moreover, that Jesus Christ, in saying that he thirsted, would give us to understand that he, for the love which he bore us, was dying with the desire of suffering for us even more than what he had suffered: “O that desire, greater than the Passion!”2 O most lovely God! because Thou lovest