Still hungry...?

[Calliope]

I believe in the Real Presence. I was reading an apologetics thread on the subject this morning, which contained a great deal of Scripture and Quotes from Christ about the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

I had not read these Scriptures for awhile, and was struck in particular by one, where Christ states that after eating bread, people will be hungry again, but after eating Him, the bread from heaven, people will no longer hunger.

I believe this refers to a deep down spiritual hunger. That Christ has promised to satisfy our REAL hunger, by providing REAL bread from heaven.

But, I have participated in the Eucharist, and my spiritual hunger has not been satisfied. I don’t understand. I don’t know what is missing.
I know I must not be alone in this…anyone have any thoughts or ideas on this?

Calliope

 

[puzzleannie]

I
But, I have participated in the Eucharist, and my spiritual hunger has not been satisfied. I don’t understand. I don’t know what is missing.
I know I must not be alone in this…anyone have any thoughts or ideas on this?

Calliope

can’t answer for you, and spiritual direction can help you personally but in general, the problem may be failure to respond to Christ’s initiative in coming to me in the Eucharist, failure to love and serve the Church and God’s poor, failure to evangelize, failure to be a disciple, failure to live what I have just said I believe and embrace.

 

[MSParrott]

This is just my take on it.
Once we have received Him in the Eucharist, we will no longer hunger, because we have truly found God there, As far as a spiritual hunger, we will always have that because there is so much to learn and experience with Him - and that is a good thing.
Hope that made sense.

 

[Jlcastagna]

Until we get to Heaven, we are all unfinished Christians.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

For me, spiritual hunger usually comes if I have abstained from communing with the Lord for a long time. That’s in devotions, in private time with the Lord, not in the Eucharist. If I haven’t talked to God or prayed with him, and have just overall ignored him for days or weeks on end. And when that hunger comes, often it doesn’t end very quickly. It lasts quite a while as I pray for intimacy with God (which I know is the answer). But that hunger invariably leads me to some wonderful experience with God or new understanding of him, in the long run.

I don’t know if this is how it works in your situation at all. It may be just me.

King David talked in the Psalms about panting for the Lord as a deer for water. I find it easy to relate to those words, a lot of the time.

 

[water]

can’t answer for you, and spiritual direction can help you personally but in general, the problem may be failure to respond to Christ’s initiative in coming to me in the Eucharist, failure to love and serve the Church and God’s poor, failure to evangelize, failure to be a disciple, failure to live what I have just said I believe and embrace.

Thanks for this reply.

But, I have participated in the Eucharist, and my spiritual hunger has not been satisfied.

Calliope, what is to indicate when you are satisfied? Do you know this?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Our spiritual hunger will not cease until we are with Christ in heaven.

“Our souls are restless, until we rest in thee O Lord.”
St. Augustine.

Jim

 

[Calliope]

Thanks for this reply.

Calliope, what is to indicate when you are satisfied? Do you know this?

No, I don’t know. I don’t really know what the verse means, but in the other thread, people interpreted it as referring to the Eucharist and that we would not hunger after we partook…but then they said that obviously it didn’t refer to food hunger, because we get hungry again, but that it referred to spiritual hunger.

I do not know what the verse really means, so if you have an interpretation please share it.

Now on this thread people are saying we will continue to hunger, so what was Christ referring to?

I never had a Catholic Bible study, so I am stumped on this one.

Thanks for the responses.

 

[water]

Calliope, I quoted puzzleannie’s comment which I think it helps you. I am too learning the meaning of the verse.

can’t answer for you, and spiritual direction can help you personally but in general, the problem may be failure to respond to Christ’s initiative in coming to me in the Eucharist, failure to love and serve the Church and God’s poor, failure to evangelize, failure to be a disciple, failure to live what I have just said I believe and embrace.

 

[LilyM]

Our spiritual hunger will not cease until we are with Christ in heaven.

“Our souls are restless, until we rest in thee O Lord.”
St. Augustine.

Jim

I was thinking of the same quote - and that restlessness is what God uses to draw us ever closer to him, so it’s not a bad thing. We won’t truly be at rest until our lives are done.

Perhaps Christ was simply saying we won’t hunger for lesser food, lesser things, but only for Himself?

 

[The_Truthinator]

Perhaps the Eucharist* gives* us something of an appetite: A desire to grow deeper in our relationship with God, and a desire to help our community and our world, and it is when we continually satisfy this desire that we no longer hunger…

A bit midrashic, maybe, but a nice way of looking at things…

Or maybe in claiming that the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, is the perfect Sustenance, Christ was merely proclaiming his sufficiency. After all, though we “hunger” in a sense to deepen and strengthen our faith, how often does this desire lead us astray from God?