One day when I was a four or five, I went
with my mom to visit my godmother. While the two of them sat in the den
chatting, I went into the backyard to play, and while I was running around, I
noticed, of all things, scraps of chocolate cake on the lawn. My godmother’s
upstairs neighbor Rose had thrown bits of cake onto the grass for the birds to
eat. Without thinking twice, I picked up some of it and started munching. Bad
move. My mom happened to be looking out the window to check on me. She
roared out the window. “Stop that. What will the neighbors think! When you’re
hungry, you just ask your mom, and she’ll give you something to eat.” I was hungry the cake looked good, but it was really dry and stale.
Like my mom Jesus wants us to go to him
for everything we need. He desperately wants to fill us with himself, Jesus
longs to give himself away to us, to be one with us. He wants to give us the everything
that he is, the everything that God is. And so, he declares that his flesh is
real food, Bread that nourishes and satisfies us beyond anything we can experience
or imagine. Jesus calls us away from all the stale “stuff” that can only impede
his access to our hearts. Our constant work is to be and to remain incessantly
hungry for the Bread that he is, the Bread that we receive in the Holy Eucharist.
