As I write this at 11:40 am, my attention is being hijacked by hunger. The discomfort and distraction in my tummy shouting: “you cannot ignore me.” I don’t even have a plan for lunch right now, but I know I’m craving hot wings again, and I won’t be sitting here for much longer. Like all other pains, hunger is designed to move living things to action.
When a human senses any kind of pain, he or she has a few choices. We can anesthetize – pop a pill and move on with our day. The problem with this approach is that pain doesn’t exist for itself, but points to a need that must be addressed. So, the gift of anesthetics can often become the equivalent of unplugging a fire alarm and expecting the smoke to clear.
Another approach is to acclimate to the pain. This tactic sees pain as an unavoidable thing that must be adopted into our normal experience until we develop a tolerance for it. The problem here is the same: merely another way of ignoring reality. Imagine convincing yourself that the fire alarm is just the catchy beat to this hazy nightclub vibe we’ve got going on in here. The roof is on fire!
Finally, we can choose to attend to the source of the pain. Now, even here we’ve only branched into a new set of options. It is possible to attend to the source of the alarm poorly. We can end up pouring water on a grease fire. And, too often, our pain points to a problem we are powerless to address. This is another kind of hunger pain, signaling a deeper kind of need.
True hunger is a pain we don’t have too much experience with. For us it’s less of an alarm and more of a notification on our phone. A gentle nudge on the off chance that we lost track of our regularly scheduled mealtimes. We remain so thoroughly fed for so much of our lives, we don’t often think about hunger as the kind of thing that requires a thoughtful response. Why am I hungry? What am I hungry for? Is my craving healthy? Is this constantly recurring signal designed to point me to a deeper spiritual hunger? Who has time to philosophize about the most practical thing on earth?
Scripture tells us about ourselves: God created man hungry and gave Himself for our food. When we forget or ignore that hunger, or fill it with anything but Him, we die. This is why we make such a big deal about feasting families at St. Patrick. We want to form you to love God, love people, and love life! So, join us this weekend as we receive Christ together in Word, sacrament, and prayer, and wonder at the abundance of the table He has laid out for His children.