Wise Words on Wednesday: Your Vocation
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
– Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace
Tag: Hunger
Wise Words on Wednesday: Restless Hunger
[It’s a]…sense of a strange restlessness or a fierce curiosity. It’s probably best described as the mental, spiritual and emotional equivalent of being physically hungry, that strange but intense hunger when you don’t quite know what it is that you want to eat.
CS Lewis famously described a ‘God-shaped hole’ in each of us, which would remain empty until we knew God
– Divine Embrace
Sunday Lectionary: Bread from Heaven
I’ve been on vacation this week so my notes are late and not quite as polished as they are normally.
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2nd August, 2012
Our Readings this week focus again on the subject of sacred food.
In the First Reading, we read how the Israelites were fed with manna in the desert. The manna is also the subject of this week’s Psalm, as psalmist proclaims “The Lord gave them bread from heaven”. These are also the words quoted by the crowd who come to Jesus after “The Feeding of the Multitude”. The crowd comes expecting another free meal, but rather than filling their stomachs, Jesus directs them towards deeper spiritual realities, declaring Himself to be “the bread of life” and that “whoever comes…will never hunger, and whoever believes…will never thirst”.
Our understanding of the Second Reading may be illuminated by considering the rite of Baptism in the early centuries of the Church. In preparation for the Sacrament, someone wishing to be baptised would receive a period of instruction. Afterwards, he would then arrive at the Baptismal pool and shed himself of his clothes, symbolically demonstrating that he wished to “put away the old self of [the] former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires”. He would then descend into the baptismal pool where he would be washed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, “renewed in the spirit of [his] mind”. He would then ascend and be clothed in a white garment to show that he had “put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth”. After having been washed in the waters of regeneration, this newly-born Christian would be admitted to the liturgy of the Eucharist where he would finally receive the bread of life.
We too have been washed in the waters of baptism, we too have been admitted to the altar. Let us live our lives this week in the “holiness of truth” . We do not receive simply the “bread of angels”, but something even greater, “the bread of life” Himself.
When, through the hand of the priest, you receive the Body of Christ, think not of the priest which you see, but of the Priest you do not see. The priest is the dispenser of this food, not the author. The Son of man gives Himself to us, that we may abide in Him, and He in us – Alcuin
Lectionary Notes: Feeding The Hungry
Things have been a bit non-stop this last week, so I’m afraid these notes are late, slightly shorter than usual and a little bit rushed, but as GK Chesterton said, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”…
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 31st July, 2011
Reading 1: Isaiah 55:1-3
After Jeremiah, Isaiah is my favourite prophet. This book is often called “The Fifth Gospel” and, with a passage like this, it’s easy to see why. Here, God gives a beautiful invitation to His people to come and be satisfied, to return to Him, to come and be filled free of charge! Why settle for anything less?
When we recognize our hunger and our dependence on God, He will fill us and give us life.
Thus says the LORD:
“All you who are thirsty, come to the water!
You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat;
Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!
Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare.
Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life.
I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David”
Suggested Questions:
- What is the general invitation of this passage?
- What does this food and drink cost? What does this say about God?
- What do you think the “water” here represents?
- What do you think the “grain” here represents?
- What do you think the “wine” here represents?
- What do you think the “milk” here represents?
- In what way do we “spend [our] money on what is not bread”?
- Why do we do spend our “wages for what fails to satisfy”?
- What is promised together with this food?
- What was the promise God made to David?
- How do we experience the invitation of this passage today?