OUR HUNGER AND THIRST FOR GOD

 


WEDNESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTER

Act 8:1-8; Ps 66:1-7; Jn 6:35-40

The Refinement of Our Thirst and Hunger

We understand conversion to be a spiritual experience. It is the commencement of a spiritual life, which we have described as participation in the life of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us. It is a new life with a different principle and end or purpose from the natural life we are used to from birth. Before Jesus Christ, our Lord, there was no possibility of this new life in us because of our sinful condition and life. Saint Stephen described the sinfulness of our natural condition and its anti-God tendency in his speech to his Jewish brothers. The hunger and thirst characterising the natural life we received from our parents are usually corrupted and warped by sin and evil. The cause of this is the darkness that sin and evil use to pervade our whole being, inducing us to hunger and thirst for creatures inordinately; that is, desiring creatures in place of God. The warped desires in a sinful soul are the chains with which the forces of evil enslave the soul. Thus, the deliverance and salvation of man entail putting to death these inordinate desires and originating new desires ordered to their respective ends or objects. Since the purpose of life is its end and the principle of every other desire in us. God gave us a new life by giving us a new purpose by sending his Only Begotten Son to assume our nature. Therefore, the incarnation is not just the Eternal Word dwelling in human nature. It is also a new life for man.

Jesus Christ talks about the new purpose and the corresponding life in the passage today. Our faith in Jesus Christ is the principle of a new life that has its purpose or end as God, sacramentally present in the Son of Man. “Jesus said to the crowd: ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.’” God gives the corresponding gift of faith with the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, to all men. But the gift awaits our reception and cooperation to receive the new life and eat the spiritual food that will nourish it. Our Lord understood the misconception of God in the minds of the Jews and spoke of the difficulty of their believing in him and having access to the spiritual food and drink he represents for them. “But, as I have told you, you can see me and still you do not believe.” They see the sacrament of God’s presence but refuse to admit their sinful condition, which would bring their hunger for Jesus Christ to the fore. We must acknowledge our sinfulness and helpless condition to receive forgiveness and a new life. The first effect of the presence of the Just One is to facilitate this self-knowledge and admission of sins and contrition for them. All our warped and sinful natural desires find their culmination in this acknowledgment of sins and admission of our betrayal and murder of the Just One, who is the sacrament of God’s presence. The new and transformed hunger and thirst emanating from our confession of faith and possession of the new life have Jesus Christ as their satisfaction.

Their realisation that their joy and satisfaction can never be limited or quenched by temporal events or experience was the source of unbounded happiness and freedom for the faithful in Jerusalem. Hence, they were not intimidated by threats or forces of persecution from living out their spiritual life and joy. “That day, a bitter persecution started against the church in Jerusalem, and everyone except the apostles fled to the country districts of Judaea and Samaria.” The joy and spiritual satisfaction were unlimited and unrestricted by physical conditions and events because the object of their spiritual desires was present to them everywhere and every time. “Those who had escaped went from place to place preaching the Good News. One of them was Philip, who went to a Samaritan town and proclaimed Christ to them. The people united in welcoming the message Philip preached, either because they had heard of the miracles he worked or because they saw them for themselves.” Thus, Jesus redefines the desires of all who come to him in faith and satisfies them by his presence established perpetually among and within us by his resurrection from death. The psalmist invites us to praise these works of God. “Cry out with joy to God all the earth, O sing to the glory of his name. O render him glorious praise. Say to God: ‘How tremendous your deeds!’

Let us pray: Be present to your family, O Lord, we pray, and graciously ensure those you have endowed with the grace of faith an eternal share in the Resurrection of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.  

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