Our famished heart (M. Soledad del Villar T. / Estelle Frankel)

Our hunger for food, our longing for human touch,
and our hunger for God are all part of the same desire
that shapes our famished human lives,
and challenges us to take risks, to engage with others,
and to strive for liberation, not just for us but for all.

--M. Soledad del Villar T.

    Freedom is, ultimately, uncertain and unpredictable. One of the first lessons we all must learn in order to be free is how to “bear” uncertainty and trust in the unknown. In the biblical myth of the Exodus, the manna was a vehicle for learning this lesson. Each day for forty years, the Israelites would have to go out and gather their daily supply of manna—just enough for that day…. 

    The manna challenged the Israelites to develop beginner’s mind—to experience something new and fresh while eating the very same thing each day. Instead of seeking the answers that might put their questions to rest, the manna taught the Israelites to continually live the questions, to understand that the journey to freedom is about remaining awake and curious and not going into sleep mode…. 

     Beginner’s mind is a way of life. Each day we are challenged to see the same familiar people and landscapes with new eyes. Just as the cosmos is created and sustained anew each moment, everything is alive and changing, ourselves included, if we are spiritually awake and paying attention…. When we see existence as alive with possibility, we come out of Egypt, our personal places of bondage and constriction. 

--Estelle Frankel,
Center for Action and Contemplation

Image source: Marguerite Huré, Manna, Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce, France, https://www.tripadvisor.es/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g1194572-d3258706-i111429460-Eglise_Notre_Dame_de_Toute_Grace-Passy_Haute_Savoie_Auvergne_Rhone_Alpe.html
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O make my heart beat with Thy Heart (Matthew Kelly / St. John Henry Newman)

While we are searching far and wide in this world
for something to satisfy our hunger,
God is waiting to feed us the one thing
that truly satisfied us: Himself.

--Matthew Kelly

O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus,
Thou are concealed in the Holy Eucharist,
and Thou beatest for us still… 

I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe,
with my fervent affection,
with my most subdued, most resolved will. 

O my God, when Thou dost condescend
to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink thee,
and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me,

O make my heart beat with Thy Heart.
Purify it of all that is earthly,
all that is proud and sensual,
all that is hard and cruel,
of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. 

So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day
nor the circumstances of the time
may have power to ruffle it,
but that in Thy love and Thy fear 
it may have peace. 

--St John Henry Newman,
qtd. in Dilexit nos, ¶26

Image source: https://www.keytruths.com/gods-heartbeat/
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Take me into your life (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. Every word that comes forth come the mouth of God is God speaking love to us. Every word is filled with his life, with his love, and Jesus is that Word. Remember that John’s Gospel begins with, In the beginning, there was the Word. Jesus pre-exists. God’s love already pre-exists creation. And the Word was made flesh: Incarnation. 

    Why would God, divine, eternal, take on limitation and human flesh? Why, except that he loves us that much. Eat my flesh: recognize Incarnation within you. Recognize that he is born in you. Mary didn’t just give birth to a baby, but to salvation, to redemption, to all life, that God might dwell among us. Eat my flesh: take me into your life, allow the Incarnation to touch you, to change you, to move you. Drink my blood, the blood of my Passion the blood of my sacrifice. 

    Jesus didn’t just give us a passing gift; he gave us himself, all that he was. He gave us everything. God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, not just as a gift in name, but a gift in truth. The bread and wine is not just bread and wine in the Eucharist – it is gift from God, the Incarnation, God among us, and we take him into ourselves, that he might heal our wounds, and lift us up from our falling, and fill us with a life that has no end. 

    The change in bread and wine is not in its physical properties, but in what it is essentially, what it is in spirit, what it is at work in us. It is truly Jesus present in our midst. It is God whose love is so profound that he found it necessary to join us in this life, so that we might know him, so that we might recognize him in ourselves and in each other. 

    We are a Church whose foundation is the Eucharist, his real presence in our midst, in our bodies, joining us, uniting us, and sending us. It was meant to transform not our bodies, but our hearts. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, June 11, 2023

Image source: https://www.ekklesiaproject.org/lectionary/blog/2021/07/the-work-of-god-the-bread-of-life

Jesus enters into the intimacy of our innermost self (Henri Nouwen)

        By entering into the intimacy of our innermost self, Jesus offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place, he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place. This is the mystery of the incarnation. 

--Henri Nouwen

Image source: First Holy Communion, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, 2025, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1129598872538859&set=a.1129601709205242
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Christ changes us into him (Pope Benedict)

    Precisely because it is Christ who, in Eucharistic communion changes us into him, our individuality, in this encounter, is opened, liberated from its egocentrism and inserted into the Person of Jesus who in his turn is immersed in Trinitarian communion. The Eucharist, therefore, while it unites us to Christ, also opens us to others, makes us members of one another: we are no longer divided but one in him. Eucharistic communion not only unites me to the person I have beside me and with whom I may not even be on good terms, but also to our distant brethren in every part of the world. 

    This transformation is possible thanks to a communion stronger than division, the communion of God himself. The word “communion,” which we also use to designate the Eucharist, in itself sums up the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Christ’s gift. 

    In being brought closer to Jesus in the Eucharist, we are then brought closer to other people. This why it is called, "Holy Communion." 

--Pope Benedict, Corpus Christi, 2011
 

Image source 1: Nicolas Poussin, The Seven Sacraments: Eucharist (1647), https://www.wga.hu/html_m/p/poussin/3a/2sacram2.htmlImage source 2: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8010750/Pope-Visit-UK-Full-text-of-Benedict-XVIs-sermon-at-Westminster-Cathedral.html
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 7, 2026: We all partake of the one loaf...

We all partake of the one loaf…
Do you hunger for God? 

    God cares for God’s people in so many ways. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people that the Lord, your God, has fed you with manna in times of hunger and brought forth water for you from the flinty rock. Manna was alien to the people of Israel; they had never experienced it before. In their time of need, God provided the people with something extraordinary, something outside of their experience, taking them to that which unknown, and thereby leading them closer to him. 

    But the ultimate extraordinary gift of God the Father was his Son Jesus, John’s Gospel reminds us, the living bread that came down from heaven. Word made flesh in the Incarnation, Jesus gives his flesh for the life of the world, true food and true drink. This gift, which we remember into each Eucharist, invites us into life in him, invites us to participate in the life he offers us. We receive him into ourselves that we might live in him and he in us, and we in God. Frustrated with their failure to live as one body, Paul challenges the Corinthians, asking, The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? If it isn’t, it should be! The Corinthians struggle (as, so often, do we) because fear tells them they need to remain in control, but union with Christ is only possible when we recognize that we, though many, are one body, one body in Christ. 

    In the desert, to thirst and to hunger is to know what it means to be human and to hunger and thirst for God, desiring encounter. Intimacy with God is elusive, and yet to follow God’s commands is to enter into life with him, to enter into that intimacy that we – and God – so ardently desire. Eucharist is our extraordinary opportunity to gather, to know that intimacy, to be one in him, that he might be one in us. God created us to thirst and hunger for him; in communion, we take Christ into ourselves, that we might be transformed. What more extraordinary way might God show his love for our world than this?

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Grace makes our heart flip-flop (Paula Nelsen)

    We can have a grand view of our world from a mountaintop, but it's a grand view from within our community of believers as well, folks who invite us over and over to believe in Jesus, to put our hope in him. We believe in God with all our heart; our vision isn't limited to the physical world, because we have the promise Jesus gave Nicodemus, that everyone who believes in him can have eternal life. This is the hope we are given in the Easter season and beyond. 

 

    Nicodemus was a devoted, intellectual, and hard-headed Pharisee, who knew and taught all the Jewish laws with passion and pride. He really knows his stuff! But his stuff prevents him from understanding and letting the winds of the Holy Spirit move him. He then meets Jesus, and his whole carefully constructed set of laws falls down around him. His heart recognizes the goodness and wisdom of Christ, but his head fights against it. Jesus has to use tough love, saying, You are a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? Listen to me, watch me, and learn from my life; I live that you might believe and have eternal life. 

    Our hearts soar freely and our soul can transcend this world at a moment's notice, and each time, it's a surprise. Grace makes our heart flip-flop -- it's the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit. It's reminding us that it's not about "me" -- it is about showing up and fearlessly living in a loving manner in whatever situation God puts us into. 

--Paula Nelsen,
Communion Service,
April 18, 2023

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=814EnoSLb8c