Spiritual Hunger

At last count there were roughly 430 million people who live in the United States, and providentially, in this land there are hardly any individuals that physically starve to death each year. We live in a country that produces more food than we can consume. If someone is physically hungry here in the United States, there are programs to help with food assistance-many of these programs are run by the Catholic Church. Our own parish, through the good works of the St Vincent de Paul Society and the bread ministry help to ensure that no one in Meridian Township goes to bed with an empty stomach.

We are one of the first nations to rush to the aid of countries that are suffering famine and yet, here in the United States, in the land of plenty, we sit by and watch as our children and grandchildren, our family and friends, starve to death spiritually. We sit by placidly as the same people that we so readily share a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with-the people that we love enough to spend the holidays with-the people that we might spend hours in the kitchen preparing a meal for-the people that we care enough for to physically feed-we sit back and allow them to spiritually starve to death.

Today, we should be asking ourselves the question-why. Why do we allow those  people that we say that we care about, the same people that we are concerned enough with to ensure that they are physically fed, why do we allow them to suffer and starve to death spiritually? Is it because we do not believe what Jesus says in today’s Gospel? Have we reduced Jesus to just some nice guy, that as long as we try to do the right thing-whatever society might deem that to be in the moment-that as long as we’re ‘good people’-that Jesus surely will be merciful in the end, because after all-“who’s to judge?” If we examine today’s Gospel, we’ll find that if this is what we think, we are mistaken.

When I was younger and I was asked why I was a Catholic, I almost embarrassingly offered some half-hearted answer about how my ancestors had been Catholic for centuries and my Catholicism was something that was more a birth right than something that I had chosen for myself. But as I have gotten older and matured in my faith and in my relationship with a living Jesus, I increasingly point to today’s Gospel when I am asked why I am Catholic. Like other Christians, we Catholics profess the Kerygma-That God made you. That God is in love with you. That God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, to reconcile us back to the Father, to atone for our sins He suffered, died, was buried and rose again in order that we might have hope for eternal life and that this same God desires a relationship with you.

And it is at this point, that those Christians who, 500 years ago, abandoned the Church that Jesus founded, stop. But the Catholic Church, our Church, the Church that maintains an uninterrupted line directly back to the time when Jesus walked the earth-continues. Because we as Catholics believe what Jesus said. We believe that when Jesus says that He is the living bread that came down from heaven and that if we desire eternal life, we must eat His flesh and drink his blood. That if we desire to

live, not physically, but spiritually for eternity, that we must take Jesus at His word and feast upon his flesh.

And because Jesus cannot lie, He provides a way for this to occur, 2,000 years after He spoke the words that we heard in today’s Gospel. That at every Mass, Jesus himself acting through the priest, suspends time and space for a split second, takes us back to the Last Supper and changes simple bread and wine into Himself. Jesus changes what would feed us physically for a moment, into the very thing that feeds us spiritually for eternity. At every Mass, heaven and earth collide and the flesh that is true food and the blood that is true drink appear. This is how much Jesus loves you. This is how much Jesus desires to be one with you. That He humbles Himself and appears under the auspices of something so simple because he desires nothing more than to ensure that you, His disciples, have life within you.

We are all familiar with the feeling of physical hunger. We know what it’s like to be hungry, to have an empty stomach and we all know what it’s like to be full, to have a stomach filled with food. We know the differences between those two things. But do we recognize and appreciate the fact that there is such a thing as spiritual hunger? Have we ever looked at the world and wondered why it seems to be

falling apart? Have we ever worried for the future of our children and grandchildren Have we considered that the world might be in such dire straits because….it’s starving? Starving spiritually. That people are so busy trying to fill up the void left by their spiritual hunger that they fill, not with the bread of life, but with the very things that will lead to their damnation? That instead of running to the only thing that will satiate spiritual hunger, people instead turn to the very things that are the antithesis of eternal life.

But all is not lost, because we have the answer. You have the answer. And the answer is Jesus. Not some watered down, distant Jesus professed by some Christians, but a Jesus that fulfills what He says in today’s Gospel. A Jesus that loves and desires to be with you so much that he allows himself to be consumed. A Jesus that desires to feed you, to feed you Himself, so that your deepest spiritual hungers will be filled.

Today as we think about those people in our lives that we feed physically, those people that we share meals with every day or at holidays, as we consider not only our own eternal souls but theirs as well, let us not be afraid to share with them the beautiful truth, that while we can feed them physically, there is only one person that can feed them spiritually. That Jesus, found really, truly, fully present in the Holy Eucharist in His Catholic Church, desires to satiate their deepest spiritual hunger. This fact, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, will be the greatest thing that you will ever share with those people that you love. If you care enough to keep them from physically starving to death, shouldn’t you care enough to keep them from starving to death spiritually?