Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
It is fairly well accepted research and knowledge,
that young children, when they're trying to learn in school,
if they are hungry, they will not learn.
The hungrier they are, the less they will learn.
They will act out, whether through
tantrums or just mischief, or they simply shut down.
A hungry child is a child that will not learn.
We know this as a nation as in year 2020
over 22 million children in our schools
were eligible for free or the Federal reduced lunch program.
The government wants our children to learn so they feed them first.
As part of that Federal program
hungry children have breakfast and lunch every day.
While we here at St. Simon School
don't have that struggle in our school,
our partner school, Saint Patrick in downtown San Jose,
feeds 75% of their students breakfast and lunch.
Otherwise, it would be pandemonium in the classroom.
A hungry child will not learn.
I suppose that's true of a hungry adult too, right?
If we are hungry, we are sort of distracted
by the pains in our stomach, right?
We are not going to want to learn either.
I suppose if it's true for our physical bodies
then it is also true for our spiritual bodies.
If we are hungry spiritually then we will not learn spiritually.
The question is then what spiritual hunger pangs look like
and what spiritual nourishment looks like.
The very feast day we celebrate today is
the solemnity of the Body and the Blood of Christ
and we celebrate this at every Sunday Mass weekly.
We believe that the food of this table is spiritual nourishment.
We believe this because the Gospel says this is true food and true drink.
We believe it really nourishes our spiritual bodies in profound ways.
Yet we often forget how powerful this nourishment really is,
or how essential the nourishment is for souls.
What do hunger pangs look like? Just for a moment?
Hunger pangs are different in every person, I suppose.
When we are cranky and when we are very dull in spirit,
these are the signs of spiritual hungers.
While it can be a mood swing,
it is most often that we are not nourished spiritually.
We don't feel settled in our soul.
When this happens, somebody says something or does something,
we feel like a child who's hungry! Cranky and impatient.
A child who's hungry will scream and yell and act out loudly.
A spiritual hunger can cause very similar acting out
often yelling and being impatient and unkind.
A deeper spiritual hunger can look like a comatose spirit
where we are dull to any love or empathy in our lives
and do not see other people as other human beings.
When we are physically so hungry that we are starving
then we sort of just exist and we become listless.
There is a spiritual version of that too.
We become listless in our hearts and have no empathy for others.
When we don't care about a suffering mother or a suffering child
or when we see children being killed in Ukraine or other places
and we just casually move to next channel.
We have become dull to the suffering of others.
That means that our spirit is dull inside.
Like our spirit is starving.
We move to shut out the whole world of sin
because we can't take it anymore.
There are plenty more examples of spiritual pangs.
What does spiritual nourishment look like?
We come to Eucharist today, in particular
to celebrate the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ,
what we used to call Corpus Christi,
and we believe that what we celebrate at this table is true food.
This will nourish our souls
and bring nutrition to what our soul needs.
God loves us so much that he became one of us
and gave his life for us
and he gives us his flesh for the life of the world.
But when we come to receive Christ,
we do not only get that nourishment from the Body of Christ,
we also get the nourishment from the Word of God.
We believe this is also spiritual nourishment and feeds our soul.
When we break open the word of God, as I'm doing now,
it is meant to somehow feed our souls.
We also believe that as we gather, we nourish each other’s soul.
We get nourishment from each other by just being here together.
Hundreds of other people have come this morning around this table
when thousands and thousands of others have chosen to stay at home.
We believe that Christ is present in each other gathered here.
We receive nourishment from the fact that I see you here.
That we are trying to get fed and to feed others.
We feed each other by our very presence,
because this is the other mode of the presence of Christ.
This Eucharist is you, me and the Word and the Body and the Blood.
Those are the four modes of the presence of Christ at each Mass
and it is how we are nourished at this very celebration each week.
What happens at the end of this mass is super important.
When you come forward to receive the body of Christ,
we don't just say, “Yeah, thank you.”
We say “Amen.” Which means “I believe.”
What do we believe?
We believe and promise “to become what we receive.”
I promise to be to become the bread of life broken for others this week,
and this is what the second letter today from Paul to the Corinthians.
“We promise to participate in the body, in the blood of Christ.”
We promise to become that food for others in this world.
Because the whole world is starving spiritually.
The spiritual pangs of hunger are real in the world.
We have seen that 1000 times more outside,
not only in ourselves, but in plenty of other people.
When you see somebody go off online
and spew all sorts of hatred, spiritual hunger;
it is really starvation of the Spirit that they're speaking from.
It is like a child having a tantrum
because not having eaten for two days,
that is what that person is doing online.
What are we going to do?
We are called to feed them.
Unless we have been fed here and we have really been nourished here
then that task will be next to impossible to do.
We cannot give, what we do not have ourselves.
We come here to strengthen ourselves first,
then to become what we receive,
the body of Christ broken for others.
We are called to live that every single day, not just Sundays.
We called to become the living bread for the world.
When we feed somebody else by being kind and gentle
and my loving and forgiving, the Lord feeds us in return.
It is this constant virtuous cycle
that we participate in and then we come back here to do it together.
That is what St. Paul is talking about—participation in Christ.
During the week if we start to hunger
then prayers with the word of God can nourish us in our homes.
That will give us even further nourishment.
We can also sing songs of praise and worship.
Or we can come to a daily Mass.
All prayer is spiritually good for the soul.
The Lord promises to be with us
when we promise to be the body of Christ for others.
Today as we attend to spiritual hungers for ourselves
and we receive nourishment from the table in the Body and Blood of Christ
and the Word proclaimed and fulfilled in our hearing,
and in each other gathered here,
we also remember we promise to become what we receive,
the body of Christ broken for others.
