Aug. 12, 2012: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

One of the first conversations that I remember having when I arrived in Donaldsonville was about eating. “I hope you like to eat,” one lady said. “We love to feed our priest in this town.”  I must say that I have had some good meals in this town!  You may have been quite perplexed when you heard me say a few weeks ago that I’m putting by breakfast, lunch, and dinner into a blender. At a recent funeral reception, a parishioner noticed the fried catfish and beef on my plate, and said with a smile, “I didn’t know you ate real food?”
Those of you who cook know that in order to serve a perfect meal the desire to feed someone is not enough; you also need someone who has the desire to eat. I can’t force Deacon Joe to eat a blender full of collard greens, tomato, carrots, avocado, banana, and plum, no matter how good it is for his health. Until Deacon Joe can pry himself away from the Pizza Rolls, Hot Pockets, and Captain Crunch--away from the fat, sodium, and sugar--he will not realize how he is depriving his body of necessary nutrition even though his stomach is satisfied. It must be a great dilemma for parents these days; even though they want to feed their children something healthful, their children ask for something with absolutely no nutritional value--lots of flour, fat, sodium, and sugar. What are parents to do, if all their children want is something that gives them immediate gratification to their taste buds, but eventually leaves them more hungry and even causes childhood diseases?

This is where Jesus finds us today. There is a great desire on the part of Heavenly Father to feed us with the only thing that truly fulfills us--His love. So He sends His Son as the Bread of Life, the ultimate fulfilment of all of our longing. Yet He finds our ‘taste buds’ too attached to what gratifies our senses, not on what truly makes us satisfied and whole in our soul. We encounter this difficulty when we teach First Communion class. The first time we let the kids “try out” unconsecrated hosts, reactions vary from, “What is it?” to “Cracker tastes better.” We adults also face the challenge of knowing and believing that the infinite and Almighty God who created the entire universe would humble Himself in the appearance and taste of simple bread so that He can unite Himself to us as we take the Communion.

The great mystery is that while the gods of other religions wished to be feared, served, or simply worshiped, the God of Israel longed to relate to his people in love, to the point of making love his central command, the core of his Covenant, and the first hint of how serious was his thirst for our return of love: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Dt 6:5). What a profound mystery that God wished to forge with all mankind and with each individual soul an intense union; and this union takes the form that we can all understand--being hungry and thirsty and being fed and quenched. Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Somehow we understand some of what Heavenly Father is trying to do, even though we all may not have had years of theology courses. Something is etched in us that responds to this desire by God to feed us and quench us. We are fashioned in the image of God, and our human longing for intimacy is a reflection of God’s own nature--to love and to be loved. We feel it at times, this stirring in our human soul that longs for union with God, and for communion with one another. The longing to merge in love, as Father and Son in eternal union, is written in our very nature. No one needs to teach an infant to embrace his parents. No one ever needed to show any culture how to hold and hug their loved ones to themselves.

Whoever seeks that embrace of love in God will never lack for anything, will never go empty, and will never hunger or thirst in vain. In fact, the more we stir up our God-directed hunger and thirst, the more we are filled. The moment we respond to God’s desire to feed us with Himself, we experience conversion and transformation. Do you lack the desire to be fed by God? How do you hunger for God? It is not a feeling, but a desire, a decision, a direction of the will. We already have innate hunger and thirst for God, so we only need to redirect ourselves to Him. The power of desire for God is already at work within us. It needs only be purified, unified, and focused again on God.