"I Thirst for Christ"
Desire and Conformity
The saints want Christ. Yet they don’t simply want Christ. They want Christ and they also come to be like the object of their desire. That’s the hallmark of every saintly life. One example that sums up this union of desire and conformity is found in the life (and especially the death) of Saint Julian, the martyr of Brioude. His feast was celebrated on August 28th (and can still be found in the Roman martyrology for that day) but is now quite overshadowed by the great doctor Saint Augustine. However, Julian was such an important figure for French Christianity that a fellow Frenchman, Saint Gregory of Tours, wrote an entire work on Julian.
I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to unearth the treasures of the full work for yourself, but I do want to highlight one statement that Julian makes as he decides (against the counsels of others) that he will not hide from persecution.
‘Nolo,’ inquit, ‘diutius commorari in hoc saeculo, quia sitio tota animi aviditate iam Christum.’
‘I wish not,’ he said, ‘to linger any longer in this world, for already I thirst for Christ with all the desire of my soul.’
(The Latin text is from Gregory’s De Passione et Virtutibus Sancti Iuliani Martyris found in the Gregorii Turonensis Opera edited by Wilhelm Arndt and Bruno Krusch, Pars II, Hannover: Hahn, 1885, p. 564.)
“I thirst,” he says. This expression belong to the crucified Christ (John 19:28) and is placed upon the lips of Julian. The conformity is clear. The saint longs and thirsts for Christ. The saint’s life, as Saint Gregory of Tours so clearly perceives, is indeed the life of Christ. It’s just the way things are in Christianity, as Paul wrote long ago: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20, RSV).