Are We Really Being Honest About our Hunger?

This is an excellent post by Lilla Marie Lottinger, submitted here with her permission from www.catholicexchange.com.

Lilla Marie Lottinger is a lay missionary living in the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese. She works for the non-profit organization: Missionaries of Our Mother of the Eucharist. Her mission in the Church is to help foster a personal relationship with Jesus, our Eucharistic Bridegroom through Mary, the Spotless Bride.She is a columnist for the St. Charles Herald Guide. She can be contacted through her website: www.ourmotheroftheeucharist.org.



What is your hunger? What is it for which you thirst? Let us be honest, be real with ourselves even if we feel ashamed, as though it is a disorder…


We must bring it to Jesus! Present it to Jesus in full light and truth. Share openly and vulnerably with Him. He longs for this.


And we will see that layers of our superficial and disordered longings begin to peel away, till we find at the core our true self, our deepest and truest longing which is for love — to be deeply known and loved by another to the core of who we are.


For this, my dear friends, is the deepest hunger and thirst that we all have — and with which we have all been created. Why?


Imagine a magnet, created to be drawn to and attached to metal. We are all created to be drawn to and attached to the love for which we were created -– Love Divine.


MANY THINGS we can feel drawn and attached to other than this love. They may have hints or even facades of this Love, but never on their own can they truly satisfy us.


Do we feel a restlessness or discontent, a desire for something more? If we take time to be really honest with ourselves, we cannot answer anything other than “yes.” … Unless, that is, we have already found the “pearl of great price” and sold everything else to buy it.


“My soul is not at rest until it rests in You my God!” St. Augustine prayed. “You were within and I was all the while looking outside.”


Yes, the answer to our hunger and thirst comes from within. It comes first from a true surrendering of our hearts and lives to our Creator; and then from allowing His redeeming, healing, consoling love to enter in.


Jesus died that we “might have life, and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10). He gives us the living waters of His love to quench our thirst, as He tells us, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13).


His life-giving Spirit is the “water” for which we thirst; His true presence in the Eucharist is the “living bread” for which we hunger.


He truly fills and satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts if we but become like the woman at the well and ask, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst!” (Jn 4:15). And this we must do daily.


And then we will be responding to Isaiah’s plea, “Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of comfort” (Is 66:10). We will be saying with the psalmist, “As a weaned child in its mother’s arms, so my soul rests in you my God” (131:2).


“When you see this your hearts will rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass” (Is 66:14).