Homily for April 21st, 2015: John 6:30-35.
“Whoever comes
to me will never hunger,” Jesus says, “whoever believes in me will never
thirst.” Those are tremendous claims indeed. Only our familiarity with the
words keeps us from recognizing how daring they are.
What do we
hunger for? Many things. One hunger, however, is universal. Every one of us
hungers for acceptance and love. At life’s beginning, our parents, mothers
especially, satisfy this hunger, if they are at least reasonably good parents.
Even the best mother’s love pales, however, beside the intensity and fervor of
God’s love for us.
A three-year
old Chinese girl in our parish pre-school showed me this not many years ago.
Her name was Doris . At the time an only child,
her parents told her that she would soon start pre-school. She talked of it
with excitement for weeks. When school started, however, there were floods of
tears. It was her first time away from her parents. She had never had a baby
sitter.
Because I was a close friend of her
family -- I had seen Doris for the first time
an hour after her birth -- I felt a special responsibility for her. When her three-hour
school day ended at noon, I would meet Doris outside her classroom, and stand
with her at, or in cold weather inside, the glass door of the school, waiting
for her mother to appear to take her home. The instant Doris
glimpsed her mother, she would break away from me and run as fast as her little
legs would take her to her mother’s arms. What an example of hunger for love!
It was heart-stopping.
That hunger for love does not
diminish as the years go by. When parental love no longer satisfies us, most of
us start looking for satisfaction of our hunger from things which, though good
in themselves, leave us still hungry and frustrated, because we can never get
enough of them: things like pleasure, possessions, power, and honor.
For many people it takes years, for
some decades, before we discover that there is only One who can satisfy the
deepest hunger and desires of our hearts. His name is Jesus Christ.
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