Readings; 1 Kings 19:4-8, Ephesians 4:30-5:2, John 6:41:51

 

Most of us at one time or another have felt a hunger that seemed overwhelming. We felt to hungry, to the point we may have felt like we were starving to death. Nicole reminds us when we get to this point that we cannot be starving. We are not ready to eat mud cookies for dinner. This hunger comes from us waiting to long between meals to feed ourselves. We are lucky in this country to have an abundance of food available to us to eat. We heard some of those statistics last week.

We insure we have enough food to satisfy our physical hunger, to the point of excess at times. This can be seen in the size of servings we receive at restaurants. We also pay no attention to the serving size we are supposed to go by. These all insure that we feed our physical hunger.

The question comes is this the only hunger we have or are we hungry for more. We all look for a better life, one that is more comfortable, with a better house and car. These are all worthwhile things to strive for. Do we work so much for these that we lose sight of what would be truly important in life. What happens if we do not achieve what we set out to do, are we like Elijah and tell God it is time to go, or also like Elijah accept the food that will satisfy our hunger for more.

The only way  to accomplish this is with the food that God will provide. We hear how Elijah makes his journey with two meals from God. The meals did not only feed his physical hunger, but his spiritual hunger as well. With both needs taken care of Elijah accomplished many things.

In this country we have no problem feeding our physical hunger, the spiritual hunger is a different story. We tend to substitute many things for our spiritual hunger. Some of the ways we try include alcohol, drugs, sex, food and scheduling ourselves so we have no spare time. We spend a whole lot of time striving for what we think is the goal only to still feel that hunger. This has led to a world that appears to be turning against God and life.

We see, as we heard from multiple popes a culture of death not life. God is not trying to show us this. He would like us to be close to him and work for a culture of life. He did this by sending Jesus to be our spiritual food.

We can certainly act as the crowds did and grumble about the predicament we find ourselves in. Paul reminds the Ephesians to set aside all anger, frustration, shouting and to revile the malice we see in the world. Now if only the politicians and world leaders would set all those things aside we may see the world peace and harmony that we all hope for. It would certainly lead to a more harmonious world that would help all those who need it.

We will be ridiculed at times for our faith and our “old fashioned beliefs” that every life is sacred from conception to natural death. This is and has seemed to be over the course of history a countercultural idea. This leads to the culture of death we heard both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict talk about. We have the power to change that culture by bearing witness to God’s Mercy and Love for each of us. We are also free to grumble amongst ourselves about what we hear or do not hear from our deacons, priests, bishops and popes.

One of the ways  to feed the spiritual hunger is to listen to the Word of God proclaimed and preached at Mass. This will give us the spiritual baseline to work from in order to be the people we are called to be. We will hear what God wants not only for us, but from us as well.

When we leave the church and get back into the world we can easily find ourselves straying from the path we want to follow. We can fail to love our neighbor or gossip about the folks we see here at church, at work or around the neighborhood we live in.

What do we when this happens. We can certainly rationalize and say the gossip is not hurting anyone, or that the person we have animosity for deserves it somehow. When we get to this point we are on our way to rationalizing many things that contribute to the culture of death, we believe it is ok for the death penalty to exist in our country. We can rationalize that is ok for us to hide our elderly away in a nursing home, or we can say it is ok for someone to have an abortion so long as we are not assisting in any way.

In order for us to overcome all of these down falls through the week we need to be fed spiritually so our defenses will be kept up. We need to know where to find this and the Gospel tells us where it is to be found. Jesus is the bread of life as we hear him proclaim to the crowds gathered around him. You can imagine the horror that they felt after hearing that the bread he wanted them to eat was his flesh.

We are called to do the same thing in the Eucharist we will receive shortly. If we eat this bread and drink this cup we will have everlasting life. We will also be nourished so that we can stay true to our faith. We do need however to remember that when we eat this bread that it cannot only feed our physical hunger but our spiritual hunger as well. The second part can be hard to do. This means we need to be affected by the body of Christ in our heart.

We need to truly believe as we are taught that we are eating the flesh of the one who saves. In doing this we need to act like he does and not as our society tends to act. To be affected by his body and blood there can be no grumbling and we need to be prepared to do the heavy lifting that is needed in today’s world. We need to be willing to stand up for what is right regardless of what others will think of us.

Also in doing this we need to be joyful and full of His Spirit in order to accomplish all we are called to do. We need to approach the Eucharist each time we receive it as if it was the first time we received, whether it is the second, or thousandth time you have received. If we do this we can begin to change the world. Are you ready to change the world?