Last Sunday, the Lord fed the hungry and this week we see them coming back for more. He tells them not to work for food that cannot last but for food that endures to eternal life. Physical hunger is therefore set within the context of spiritual sustenance and satisfaction. The manna from heaven in the first reading is but a foreshadowing of the spiritual food which is being offered by Jesus to those who choose to follow Him. Manna provides temporal and physical sustenance whereas the Bread given by Jesus will give spiritual nourishment and is necessary to sustain eternal life.So today, I want to speak of sin in the context of our search for spiritual sustenance. How are we to think of sin? For an understanding of sin, let us turn to a debate between the Dominicans and Franciscans. They debated on whether or not Christ would come if Adam had not sinned. In this debate, the Franciscans held the position that Christ would have come even if Adam had not sinned. My interest is not which position was right. Instead I am interested in how the Franciscan position can help us understand how we behave the way we do and better still, how we should behave.
First of all, our usual understanding is that Christ came to save us from our sins and bring us back to God. He became like Adam in order to undo Adam’s sin. Thus, through His obedience, He is able to lead us back to God. This, in a nutshell, explains what St Irenæus would call the doctrine of recapitulation. St Paul himself had given the idea in his Letters to the Ephesians (Eph 1:10) and also to the Romans (Rom 5:12ff).
The Franciscan position is helpful because it gives us an insight into the nature of created reality. If there had been no sin and yet Christ would still come, this position is telling us something about our orientation—our human constitution or make-up. Even if creation were perfect, that is, even if it had not been vitiated or weakened by sin, it would still be incomplete because creation would still exhibit its in-built dependence on the Creator.[1] We are made for God and Christ’s coming is to fulfil humanity’s search for God. In other words, there is in humanity an insatiable desire for God. Therefore, sin in this context can be seen as distortion of our orientation or compass for God. Sin blinds us to our need for God.
What does this mean?
It means that we are always searching for God and hunger is an expression of our existential need for God. Since creation is dependent, it means that there will never be a time when humanity will never hunger for God. This is where we run into trouble because our hunger sometimes leads us to deadly places.
Given this, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta provides us with a key to understanding how deadly unruly appetites can be and how the Bread of Life is the only adequate antidote to this existential hunger. She said that the biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted. What has happened is that we have turned what is for us existential human needs, that is, to be loved, to be wanted, to be recognised into obsessions. We have become obsessed with possessing things mostly and people sometimes. We are obsessed with status or image. We are obsessed with comfort and convenience. Our existential needs as expressed through our hunger have become the obsessions of our unruly appetites. Sin is when hunger turned into unruly appetites.
However, when we consider our unruly appetites, we are often weighed down or laden with guilt, and perhaps with a sense of hopelessness or despair; a feeling that one ought to be ashamed of oneself—thinking that one is beyond redemption. I know this through hearing confession. It does not matter what the sin is—we are not concerned to describe what the sin is—but it does matter that people despair because of the recurrence of the same sin.
Such feelings only obscure the truth that our hungers-turned-unruly-appetites merely mask the strength or degree of our need for God. The more unruly our appetites the more we are searching for God. Think of something you are most ashamed of. Behind that shame is your search for God. Thus, the greater the sinner does not mean the greater the condemnation. Instead it just means the greater the search for God.
So, if only we pause a while, if we take a look at our insatiable needs. Whenever we are afflicted by an addiction, realise that our search for God has just quickened. Our addictions only confrm that we need God even more. Now we may begin to appreciate and recognise how important it is to stop halfway, sit, think and allow God to interrupt our “usual” way of doing things. It helps us re-align our existential needs with our true orientation. In the context of sin, we never have bad appetites. We never have poor appetites. We only have unruly appetites.
But, in a sense, the Gospel tells us that we are, of all people, most truly blessed. Today, we have with us a group of people who are in the RCIA journey. They will look to us for the example we can give, that we are truly blessed. Why? We have been given the Bread of Life to remind us that nothing comes close to satisfying our deepest desires. Thus, the Bread of Life is a reminder to us that only Christ is the answer to our hunger. He is God. Only God alone can satisfy us fully. If this does not sound convincing, then that’s because we have been duped or misled into thinking—like the crowd--that hunger is just physical or material. It is not. St Augustine tells us that our hearts are made for God. Let us search for Him.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] That you are seated here for Sunday Mass is ample proof of this dependence of creation on the Creator. You are here primarily not because you have sinned and are in need of salvation, even though that may be true. Your being here is an expression of created reality’s dependence on God. Created reality is always dependent reality. We have this from John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word...Through him all things came to be...
