Hunger: Pleasures of the Heart

"They all ate and were satisfied" (Luke 11:17).

This one sentence is recorded at the end of today's gospel miracle of the feeding of five thousand. It contains within itself many of the longings aroused by and also satsified through the gift of the Holy Eucharist. Truly, it is the bread of heaven, containing within itself all sweetness.

I've been continuing to read Michael Casey's book Toward God: the Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer. In it, he quotes Gregory the Great (Gospel Homily 36.1) in reference to the dynamic hunger-satiety which is both the catalyst and result of prayer. The same can be said of the Great Prayer, the Eucharist.

Gregory the Great, ever the master of the human spirit's psychology, hits the nail on the head of my own experience.

"There is a great difference, dear brothers, between the pleasures of the body and those of the heart. Bodily pleasures set alight a strong desire when they are not possessed, but one who has them and partakes of them, becomes satiated and tires of them.

On the other hand, spiritual pleasures are tiresome when they are not possessed, when they are possessed they cause even greater desire. The one who partakes of them hungers for more, and the more one eats the hungrier one becomes.

In carnal pleasures the appetite causes satiety and satiety generates dissatisfaction. In spiritual pleasures, on the other hand, when the appetite gives birth to satiety, satiety then gives birth to even greater appetite.

Spiritual delights increase the extent of the desire in the mind, even while they satisfy the appetite for them. The more one recognizes the taste of such things, the more one recognizes what it is that one loves so strongly.

We cannot love what we do not have because this would involve not having experienced the taste... you cannot love God's sweetness if you have never tasted it. Rather, embrace the food of life with the palate of the heart so that, having made trial of his sweetness, you may be empowered to love."

Desire of all nations, come!

I am often asked why I became Roman Catholic. One part of my conversion was falling in love with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I had always loved the physicality of faith and as a Lutheran Pastor I had relished it. Light the candles, put on the alb and stole. Swing the incense and use the holy water, but not too much or too often, lest someone accuse you of being a “Papist.”

I had all of the “playschool” Catholic accoutrement. I used the outward trappings, and also prayed a daily office. Fiirst it was the Episcopalian (BCP) then Lutheran (LBW) and finally in the later years the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. But even that was never enough.

Slowly, over a period of years, I conceived an intense desire to spend time with Jesus as He was present in the Eucharist. I began to visit the local Catholic Church, being careful to park in the adjacent public library parking lot so as to not arouse parishioner suspicions. I spent some lovely afternoons praying quietly with our Lord. I pondered what to do with this underground, if not illicit, love affair.

I had more or less always conceived of myself as an Evangelical Catholic, a code name for “High Church” Lutherans. Then I did eventually become Roman Catholic in 1998. But it wasn’t until Valentine’s Day 2003 that I understood the visceral connection between the physicality of the Eucharist and my own spirituality.

I “happened to” attend a conference on “Theology of the Body” led by Christopher West. I can’t quite explain here how John Paul II’s Theology of the Body connects- it’s way too complicated. Suffice it to say that I realized that my love affair with the Eucharist is really part of a larger physical connection with Divine Self-Giving Love. A true Desire… a physical desire met by God’s physical, “real” embodied provision of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of His Son given for us.

This human clay aches for an affirmation of our physicality and its true goodness. The Eucharist is God’s ringing affirmation of that embodiment. So, our Advent waiting places within each of us the Desire of all. The Feast of the Nativity marks the beginning of its fulfillment. Our daily worship at God’s Altar applies that self-giving love to our hungry souls and bodies.

O King of the Gentiles and the Desired of all,
you are the cornerstone that binds two into one.
Come, and save poor humanity,
whom you fashioned out of clay.