Lectio divina
Food that perishes
«Do not seek the food that perishes» (Jn 6:27)
After having definitively left his father's house and squandered everything he owned, the youngest son in the Gospel parable, thinking back on his entire story, confessed bitterly to his own conscience alone: "I am dying of hunger here."
(Lk 15,:17).
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You are the Lord
How many times have we too, after having sought and tasted the many and seemingly satisfying "delights" that the earth offers its inhabitants, found ourselves disappointed, dissatisfied, empty, still hungry and thirsty. But why?
There is a very deep hunger and thirst within us that nothing and no one can satiate. Ours is a longing beyond matter, beyond all the earthly things that we can see, touch and possess. It is a burning thirst for truth, for love, for good.
Until we have reached the fullness for which we are made and to which we inevitably tend, we will always feel lacking, therefore not fully happy. We are hungry when our stomach, our life, lacks something. But we will always have voids, more or less deep and tormenting, until God comes to fill us, as only He can do. "The rich grow poor and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack nothing." (Ps 33:11). The spirit of man is shaped on divine, infinite dimensions (cf. Gen 1:26. 27). Only the Infinite, the Eternal, the Immense can fill it. The mystery of man calls out for the mystery of God: "Deep calls to deep."
(Ps 42:8).
"You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is your virtue and your wisdom beyond measure. And man wants to praise you, a particle of your creation that carries around its mortal destiny... It is you who stimulates him to delight in your praise, because you made us for you and our heart is restless until it rests in you".
(Saint Augustine).
The Psalms also sing this truth: "O God, you are my God, I seek you at dawn, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you, like a dry, parched land where no water is" (Ps 62:2). "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Ps 41:2-3). "Only in God does my soul rest, from Him comes my hope".
(Ps 61:6).
Whether we know it or not, whether we are vividly aware of it or not, we are all hungry, hungry for the infinite, hungry for God.
Why beg everywhere for insubstantial crumbs when God himself offers us his nourishing, substantial, abundant bread? He has provided it, for us. Without this food we will always remain hungry, empty, insignificant, disappointed inside.
There are many palliatives for man's deep hunger, "manna from the desert" offered cheaply to solve all problems, just as many. But they can never satisfy the needs of the heart, change the course of life and cancel the advance of death. "Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and are dead."
(John 6:49)
The heavenly Father, our creator, the one who made us and shaped us and knows our desires perfectly, the one to whom we totally belong, "gives us the bread from heaven, the true bread" (John 6:32), "so that whoever eats it may not die."
(John 6:50)
But what is this bread of God prepared for us, given to our hunger? It is not a thing, it is a person, it is a divine Person, it is the only-begotten Son of God, it is the Lord Jesus: "The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
(John 6:33)
The world awaits Jesus, awaits Him, no one else can give Him life.
(cf. Jn 1:4.16).
We could not seek Him and meet Him if He had not made Himself a gift for us, if He had not followed our footsteps before any of our movements. The Eucharist is Christ who gives Himself to us; who offers Himself in the sign of infinite love, meeting our deepest needs; who makes Himself small and humble, hiding not only His divinity but also His humanity, so that we do not fear His greatness; who makes Himself food to serve us and tell us His total availability to be assimilated and to transform us into what He is. «The disciple whom Jesus loved opens his account of the Last Supper and of the Passion with these very moving words: "Before the feast of the Passover, knowing that His hour had come to pass out of this world to the Father, because He had loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end».
(cf. Jn 13:1).
And from these words it is immediately clear that the sacrament and sacrifice of the Eucharist, instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, are, like his Passion and his Resurrection, which they perpetuate until the end of time, the perfect and ineffable incarnation of his love for us. I say "incarnation" rather than expression, because in this divine sacrament the infinite love of God continues to be incarnate, to dwell among us in his corporeal substance hidden under the species of bread and wine.
Jesus often manifested his desire to share with us the mystery of his divine life. He said that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly (cf. Jn 10:10). He came to cast his life of love like a fire on the earth, and he longed to see it lit... His infinite charity, imprisoned in his Sacred Heart, longed to break out of that prison and communicate itself to the whole human race, because, like God, he is substantial goodness, and the specific nature of good is precisely that of being "diffiusivum sui".
This is why the Church, in her liturgy, continues to apply to Christ in the most holy Eucharist the words that Jesus said to the afflicted of his time (cf. Mt 11:28). Because in the Eucharist, Christ of the Last Supper still breaks bread with his disciples, still washes their feet, thus showing that if he does not humble himself and serve them, they will have no part with him.
(cf. Jn 13:8)» (T. Merton, Speme).
If we want to live divinely, it is Christ that we must nourish ourselves. «He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me."
(John 6:56-57)
The Eucharist is the divine nourishment for us, poor, needy, empty of everything. Jesus says to each one: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened" (Mt 11:28). He wants everyone at his banquet, "the poor, the maimed, the blind, and the lame" (Lk 14:21) to heal their wounds, to cure their fevers, to cleanse them of his divine life and renew them. "Take and eat... Drink from it, all of you."
(Mt 26:26. 27).
Who among us does not feel poor, in certain circumstances terribly poor and alone, despite all that he possesses and all the people around him?
Who among us does not find himself confused by realizing his own persistent precariousness, the fragility of his good intentions and the insecurity generated by the wounds of sin? Who among us has never felt the emptiness of his own ineptitude, his moral blindness, the inability to escape from the prison of his own negative inclinations? Who among us does not feel the imperious need for fullness, for beauty, for happiness, for celebration? We must truly turn to the Lord, ceasing to run after the illusory promises of the world.
"Come to the water, all you who are thirsty! Let those who have no money come! Buy and eat without money, without expense, wine and milk. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, your wealth for what does not satisfy?"
(Is 55:1-2).
The Lord knows all too well our nothingness as creatures, our deep aspirations, and invites us to trust (cf. Jn 14:1; Sir 11:12.13). He reassures us: "Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20). In his love he has prepared, devised, invented the remedy: his vivifying Presence for us, near us, in us, the Eucharist. No one can say: It is not for me!
You hunger and thirst for the infinite like all your brothers and sisters. To satisfy your heart you are given a "hidden manna" (Rev 2:17), mysterious, a food that gives you life, full life, eternal life. Accept it! It is the Eucharist, the most beautiful gift, the supreme gift of Love.
