Today's Gospel

To Be Human is to Be Hungry

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we listen to the gospel, we listen for a word or a phrase or an idea that the Holy Spirit uses to capture our attention, to bring the gospel reading of the day into focus for us so that we can live it more fully. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 8, verses 1 through 10. In those days when again a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, He called His disciples to him and said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me for three days now and they have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way, and some of them have come a long way." And His disciples answered them, "How can one feed these men with bread here in the desert?" And he asked them, "How many loaves have you?" They said seven. And he commanded the crowd to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves. And having given thanks, He broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before the people. And they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish, and having blessed them, Jesus commanded them also to set these before the people. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about 4,000 people. And then He sent them away. And immediately, He got into the boat with His disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

What jumps out at you today? Did the Holy Spirit use a word, a phrase, or an idea to capture your attention? Jesus is feeding the thousands of people. The first thing is to go beyond the literal and to ask ourselves, okay, what am I hungry for today? To be human is to be hungry, and to know what we're really hungry for is wisdom. Sometimes we think, "Oh, I'm hungry for this, or I'm hungry for that." And then we go off and do this or have this experience or whatever else. And we realized the hunger that was there before, it's still there. In fact, not only is it still there, but it's gotten greater since our latest attempt to feed the hunger. And as we grow in our walk with God, we realized that at the core of all hunger is our hunger for God. It's our need for God, our hunger for God. And it's a hunger that needs to be fed. And it's easy to overlook it. If you get hungry physically, your body will tell you pretty quick, right? You get hungry physically, you get tired, you get fatigued, your stomach will begin to growl. You probably get a bit cranky. And your body's talking to you, right? Your soul, it gives indications off too, when it's getting hungry, but they're not physical, so we have to learn to pay attention to them. We have to learn to get in touch with the hunger of our soul. How hungry is your soul today? Is it really hungry? Is it not very hungry? Is it hungrier than it's been in a long time? Do you know? Have you been paying attention? Is it something we need to pay more attention to? Probably. Have a great day. Remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.

I hope you're enjoying the Daily Gospel Reflections. It's one of the things I love doing, spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I encourage you to do that today.