{"id":6357,"date":"2020-05-06T17:07:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T07:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6357"},"modified":"2020-05-06T17:56:41","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T07:56:41","slug":"hunger-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/hunger-for-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunger for Him"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Hunger for Him<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Daniel Fanous<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

In this gospel, the church chooses for us a passage where\nChrist says, \u201cI am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger,\nand he who believes in Me shall never thirst<\/em>.\u201d John 6: 35<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then as it continues in the Gospel, we hear that Christ says\nto them that \u201cMy life is in you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and\nthe bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the\nworld<\/em>.\u201d  John 6: 51<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve always found it fascinating that this gospel is read on\nthe second Sunday of the Holy 50 days of resurrection.After Easter, after the\nfeast of the resurrection, we celebrate 50 days of joy. In these 50 days of\njoy, the Church selects for us Gospels that generally revolve around the theme\nof \u2018Christ like life\u2019, where He says, \u201cI am the door, I am the bread of life, I\nam the way, I am the truth, I am the life, I am the light of the world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve always found it fascinating that in this particular Gospel,\n\u201cI am the bread of life,\u201d is the second Gospel. It\u2019s as though the church is\nreminding us of two things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christ gave Himself for the life of the world. We should\nnever forget, never dissociate. Never take that dimension away from the\nresurrection. Secondly, although He was crucified and resurrected, He is always\nwith us through His body in His blood on the Altar. Although He has, in a\nsense, left this world, He’s never left this world even unto the end of the\nages. He’s with us in His present through His body and blood on the Altar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So these two things that Christ gave Himself for the life of\nthe world, and that yet He remains with us through His Body and Blood, I think\nthese are the reasons why the Church selects this Gospel, that He is the bread\nof life, that whoever feeds on, whoever has His life in will be transformed by\nthe life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Ignatius of Antioch was the bishop of Antioch, they led\nhim in a procession before they killed him. on his way to be martyred, in the\nsecond century, wrote to the church in Rome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote to the Romans and said this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo not talk about Jesus Christ while you desire the\nworld. Do not let envy dwell among you. I take no pleasure in corruptible food\nor the pleasures of this life. I want the bread of God which is the flesh of\nChrist, who is at the seat of David. And for drink, I want His blood, which is\nincorruptible love.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early church knew deeply that they shared in the life of\nChrist, that He was in them. This happened and ultimately, when they partook in\nthe Eucharist, when they shared His Body and Blood. In the Eucharist, they no\nlonger had a physical hunger that was to be satisfied, but rather, Christ’s\nlife was in them, transforming them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Cyril of Alexandria commenting on this passage in John 6\nsays:  \u201cin effect, Jesus is saying, I am\nthe bread of life, not bodily bread, which merely eliminates the physical\nsuffering brought on by hunger, but rather that bread that refashions the\nentire living being to eternal life. The human being who had been created for\neternal life is now given power over death. The Eucharist, the presence of\nChrist in the body in blood on the altar, is not there to satisfy our physical\nhunger. It’s there to refashion us, to transform us, to remake us, so that we\nwould be worthy of eternal life. So that we could be a dwelling place for\nChrist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early church held on to this belief with a radical\nunderstanding that they couldn’t live without the body and the blood of Christ,\nthat He was present among them in His body in His blood. Yet, if you observe\neven in St John’s Gospel, not all who heard Christ\u2019s words hunger for that bread.\nNot all who heard that word hungered for Him. In fact, if you observe it says, even\nmany of his disciples were disturbed, by what He was saying. How could somebody\neat His flesh and drink his blood? How could His life be communicated in His\nflesh in his blood? Some were so disturbed that Christ even said to them, this\nis a hard thing who can understand it. He looked at His own disciples, as many\npeople started to leave Him and said to them, \u201cDo you also want to go away?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even His own disciples didn’t hunger. Some of his disciples\ndid not hunger for Christ. St. Augustine says, \u201cthey were far from being fit\nfor that heavenly bread, and they didn’t know how to hunger for it<\/em>.\u201d For\nthis bread requires the hunger of the inner person. They didn’t hunger for him.\nThey didn\u2019t hunger for His presence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what all of us, especially now, during this current\ncrisis, need to have very firmly in our hearts. Do we hunger for the presence\nof Christ? Everyone across this Earth now is to a certain extent separated from\nthe Altar. Separated from the Eucharist. Yet the Eucharist, the presence of\nChrist, His Body and Blood, needs now to be yearned for more than anything\nelse. We need to hunger for it. It\u2019s not a ritual. It\u2019s not a remembrance. It\u2019s\nwhere we stand face-to-face to Christ in His presence. Even though me may now\nonly be able to commune infrequently, let this yearning, this hungering that is\ngrowing within us become a joyful experience of yearning for Christ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not something we should be sad about. It is something\nwe should be joyful about, because we know we will eventually be reunited. Let\nour desires of our heart grow, knowing that He never leaves us, but that we\nneed to learn to hunger for Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hunger for Him Adapted from a sermon by Fr Daniel Fanous In this gospel, the church chooses for us a passage where Christ says, \u201cI am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.\u201d John 6: 35 Then as it continues in … Continue reading “Hunger for Him”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,317,316,230],"class_list":["post-6357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-christ","tag-eucharist","tag-holy-50","tag-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6357"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6360,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6357\/revisions\/6360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}