Hunger For The Word Of God And The Love Of God – 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; July 28, 2024

Everyone here knows the experience of bodily hunger. Even someone who has never fasted or someone who has never been worried about where their next meal is coming from, knows the feeling of hunger. We also know that, finally, if we do not eat, we will die. Someone who goes on a “hunger strike” is effectively saying, “If you do not meet my demands, I will slowly commit suicide.” Hunger is our most basic instinctive desire and it is a desire for life.

Today’s Gospel gives us St. John’s account of one of Jesus’ best-known miracles, the multiplication of loaves and fishes. He himself knew what he was going to do. He knew not just at the moment, rather he had planned this moment from eternity.

Jesus satisfied the very bodily hunger of the crowds. This is a true miracle, in which, by the divine power through which he created the universe without any pre-existing matter (“out of nothing”), he now multiplies the substance of the already existing bread and fish. In other words, it is not, as many would have it these days, a mere miracle of example, in which everyone follows Jesus’ example of sharing. Had that been the case, it would have been quite a racket, with the Apostles gathering more in fragments than what they started out with! (cf. Mt 16:8-12; Mk 8:17-21)

St. John recounts the miracle and he follows it up with Jesus’ discourse on the Bread of Life, given in the synagogue in Capernaum. In the coming Sundays through to the end of August we will hear almost the entire Bread of Life discourse.

Today, I just want to focus on the significance of Jesus satisfying the hunger of the crowd.

The miracle has three chief connections to the Old Testament. First, it is reminiscent of the manna, the miraculous food that God provided the people of Israel in their forty-year pilgrimage through the desert. Second, as we heard in today’s 1^st reading, the miracle was anticipated on a smaller scale in the life of the prophet Elisha. Third, it calls to mind one of the prophecies of Isaiah: On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth. (Is 25:6-8) The people who ate of the miraculous loaves and fish would have been familiar with all of this.

If we put the three Old Testament references together, we have the past, present, and future. The miracle of the manna belonged to the great foundational event in the life of the people of Israel, in which God delivered them from slavery in Egypt and led them through the desert to the land of promise. Elisha’s miracle occurs in the midst of the ongoing life of the people of Israel. Isaiah prophesies of ultimate fulfillment when death will be destroyed.

The miracle of the manna and the miracle of Elisha both satisfy the basic physical need. The prophecy points to the satisfaction of a greater hunger. The banquet that is associated with the destruction of death is symbolic of some deeper and more complete satisfaction, already hinted at in the physical miracles.

Jesus’ miracle is situated, like Elisha’s, in the middle. It calls to mind the same foundational event, the manna, it satisfies the same basic physical need, and it contains the same promise of something greater to come. That promise invites us to reflect on the deeper meaning of hunger and its fulfillment in Christ.

Hunger is a desire for life, but life is more than just the body.

Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4)

There is – or should be – a true hunger for the word of God. This message was already contained in the miracle of the manna, because the people were required to put their trust in God, listen to his word, and follow his instructions. The hunger for the word of God is a hunger for truth, a hunger to know the meaning and purpose of life and how to live. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that we are not self-sufficient, that we need guidance in life, and that all merely human guidance is finally insufficient.

Last Sunday, we heard St. Mark’s lead-in to this same miracle of the multiplication of loaves. That Gospel concluded with these words: Jesus heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. (Mk 6:34)

There is also hunger to love and be loved.

There is an instinct to love, found even in small children as they try to reciprocate the affection of their parents and as say a three-year-old tries to care for his one-year-old sibling. We see there the desire to love, but we see also how that desire needs to be educated and guided. Further, that instinct to give love is immersed in the deep neediness of the child that first of all cries out to be loved.

We are all weak and needy creatures and only by a miracle of grace does someone who is radically deprived on the level of human love become capable of giving love. We must first receive before we have anything to give or are capable of giving.

Sadly, we see how when an abused child is deprived of basic loving affirmation on the part of his parents, he is deprived also of the basic foundation for psychological security and stability that, on the natural level, enables him to flourish. The mutual love of husband and wife together with their love for the children they have brought into the world is the natural foundation for mental and emotional well-being that enables the child to grow beyond his absorption with his own need and learn to give love as well as receive.

Yet parents are imperfect and impermanent – a child needs to grow, mature and move away from home, while his parents will eventually die. There is a deep hunger to know that I am loved not just at home.

When boy meets girl and girl meets boy, part of the thrill of this adventure is the discovery that this person, outside my family, outside my sex even, really cares about me and vice-versa. Part of the desire for marriage is to make permanent this partnership of loving and being loved. Yet, the love of a spouse is not sufficient and if someone seeks sufficiency in that love, they will be disappointed. Then the unsatisfied “hunger” may even lead to extra-marital “adventures”.

So the deepest hunger here, is really to know that we are loved by God; God who has given us the gift of being loved by others, starting with our parents; God who has given us the capacity to love.

To be loved by God means that we matter; that means that I matter. It means that I have a place in the whole scheme of things. Otherwise, the love of family and of spouse becomes no more than some little refuge that is carved out for me or that I carve out in the midst of a fundamentally hostile, merciless, and meaningless universe.

In the hunger for God’s love there is included the hunger to belong; we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves to which we contribute. St. Paul writes, You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. (Eph 2:19)

There is included hunger for meaning and purpose; we want to know that our life matters and has a purpose beyond the present and passing moment. St. Paul writes: We know that in everything God works for the good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. (Rm 8:28-29)

There is included the hunger for truth; we want to know that all this is real, not a mere fantasy or illusion. St. John writes: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – the life was made manifest, and we saw it and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. (1 Jn 1:1-2)

There is included also the hunger for permanence, we want it to last; we would like somehow to hold on to the “peak moments” in our lives, lest they pass and disappear – which alas they must. So we long for something that will not fade away and disappear. St. Peter gives us this assurance when he writes about an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Pe 1:4-5)

Yet, it is the desire to know that we are loved by God that makes the words God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to be one of the most popular passages in the whole of Scripture. (Jn 3:16) That is why we need also the words of St. Paul: He – no one less than the Son of God – loved me and gave himself up for me. (Gal 2:20) The first security of a mother’s embrace needs to be completed by the knowledge of God’s embrace. A mere fantasy is not enough; mere head knowledge is not enough. Deep faith in the reality is needed; we must know it in our very bones. Yet, to get to that point, we must actually say “yes” to God’s love, as the Blessed Virgin Mary said “yes” to becoming the Mother of God.

At times our faith is lacking because, if the truth be told, we are afraid to be loved by God. His love is indeed a demanding love because it is the love of a true father and teacher who would guide us along difficult paths to the supreme and inestimable good.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? … He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (He 12:7,10-11) If we want to know God’s love, we must learn to recognize his loving hand in his paternal discipline.

If once we come to know the reality of God’s love, then we will hunger to love; though weak, we will want to reciprocate. If we come to know God’s love, we will discover a gratitude that wants to give. If we come to know God’s love, we will discover a security within ourselves that frees us from the preoccupation with our own need that holds us back from giving ourselves in love. If we come to know God’s love we will no longer fear his discipline, we will no longer fear being hurt, rather, we will be ready to hear the exhortation of Mother Teresa, “Love until it hurts.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Ah, but that was long ago and far away, when he died on the Cross, once for all. Yes, but the reality of what he did long ago and far way is made fully present to us here and now, to satisfy our hunger, in the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament that really, truly, and substantially contains the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the very same Son of God who offered himself for our salvation.