"The Gift of Hunger" Aug 12, 2022

The Gift of Hunger

Let us take a moment to thank our Lord for the gift of hunger, which opens us up every day in humility and gratitude to taste and see His goodness. With providential love He never ceases to respond to our filial prayer to give us each day our daily bread. He fills the hungry with good things and this bodily hunger continually reminds us how to yearn for every word that comes from His mouth, how to hunger and thirst for righteousness, how to make doing His will our food and drink, how to look with compassion on our brothers and sisters who are undernourished or malnourished in body or soul, and most of all how to crave the eternal wedding feast. In speaking about His self-gift in the Holy Eucharist in the Synagogue of Capernaum (the day after the miracle of the multiplication of five loaves and two fish and exactly a year before He fulfilled His words during the Last Supper), Jesus told us, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” He wanted to transform our natural hunger into a supernatural one for what He called the True Manna that the Father would give, what He taught us to ask the Father to bestow when He instructed us how to pray the Our Father, “Give us this day our epi-ousios or supersubstantial Bread.”
 
Helping us traverse the bridge between natural and supernatural nourishment is one of the reasons why, I think, Jesus did so much of His saving work at meals. He unveiled His glory for the first time during a wedding banquet in Cana. He embraced sinners at table in the houses of Matthew the Publican and Simon the Pharisee. He deepened friendships over food in Bethany with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. He showed His lavish generosity on hillsides by multiplying loaves and fish. He anticipated and began the new and eternal Passover at table in the Upper Room, going from natural to supernatural through the words of consecration, a wondrous passage He repeated when He revealed Himself to the disciples in Emmaus through the Breaking of Bread. And over breakfast at a seashore, He taught the apostles as shepherds how to tend and feed His sheep materially and spiritually, and as fishers of men how to fill the nets to the breaking point.
 
Jesus wants to make meals a sacred banquet, where, when two or more of us gather in His name, He joins us to continue His saving work. It’s at the table where, as we break bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands, He seeks to make us companions. It’s at table, as we share our lives with each other, that He seeks to bring about a true convivium modeled and pointing to the sharing of life that is meant to take place at the altar, where He seeks to make us “one body, one Spirit” and be brought to fulfillment in the table of God the Father’s eternal home.

In June of this year, on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, we began the U.S. Church’s three-year Eucharistic Revival, meant to help us grow in Eucharistic faith, amazement, love, life, and witness. Next weekend, we will enter into our own unique version of this Eucharistic Revival at Divine Mercy Parish entitled “Source and Submit” to spark a Eucharistic revitalization within our parish family.
 
This is the biggest Eucharistic initiative in the history of the Church in the United States. To me, the most important dimension of the Revival is not diocesan, parochial, or national; it’s personal. As pastor, I hope each of us will commit to grow our Eucharistic faith, amazement, love, and life and to share that faith, amazement, love, and life with others.
 
The reason why the US Bishops have established this initiative is in response to an evident crisis in Eucharistic faith and life in our country, one that is seen, often far more severely, in various other countries in the world. In the United States, only one out of five Catholics in the United States comes to Mass each Sunday and far fewer attend Holy Days of Obligation. Several recent surveys have shown that only three out of ten Catholics, and only half of those who attend Mass each Sunday, believe what the Church boldly professes about the Eucharist: that the Eucharist actually and astonishingly is Jesus — His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — under the appearances of bread and wine; that after the words of consecration, God Himself is really, truly, and substantially present on our altars, in our tabernacles and within us who receive Him. And since, as the Second Vatican Council memorably described, the celebration of the Eucharist is the source, summit, root and center of Catholic faith and life, if Catholics’ Eucharistic faith and practice are weak, then all of Catholic life is enfeebled. Hence the urgency and importance of the Eucharistic Revival. 

The hope for the revival is that each of us will recognize that the Lord Jesus, with his heart burning out of love for us, is calling us to Himself, and to respond with love to His love. If we live this revival personally, it will overflow into the renewal and revitalization of our family bonds, our friendships, our parish, our Archdiocese, the Church throughout our country and beyond. Not only does the Church need this revival, but each of us does. As we thank the Lord Jesus for this gift and the opportunity that He is giving us now to respond to Him, we ask Him for the grace that we may dare to do all we can in response to His lavish love, extraordinary gift, and life-changing invitation. O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving, Be Every Moment Thine! Amen!

Fr. Robert T. Cooper, Pastor
Divine Mercy Parish and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School