Please, Sir, Can I Have Some More?

“Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.” Luke 6:21

I am STARVING.

My life has been nothing but blessings for the better part of a year. I have learned more about myself, about my faith, about the Church, and about God than I had really ever even considered before. And this last week has been the best yet. I've gotten my hands on a couple great books and I ate them up. Then Friday I was smacked with the the most tangible understanding of the Church as the bride of Christ that I think I will ever know: that our becoming one flesh in the Eucharist is the consummation of our marriage! I can't get enough of this stuff. And I know that no matter how much wisdom, knowledge, or understanding I am given, it will be infinitesimal in comparison to what I'll have in eternity.

This is nothing new. It's not even an idea peculiar to religion (except, perhaps, in terms of scale). In every life, we spend years (maybe less, if we're lucky) trying to figure out the meaning of life, and why we're here, and all these massive, seemingly unanswerable questions. And we begin our search the only way we know how: by breaking it down into terms we can understand. A man may not know where he stands in the grand scheme of things, but he knows he has a mind that understands chemistry like no one else's ever has. A woman may not be the sharpest kid in her class, but she knows she has no equal in her beauty. So they've discovered their gifts. The chemist begins to study, and ever he answer he finds begets infinitely more questions. Maybe the model discovers there is more to her than just being pretty; of any number of things that could turn her off from modeling, the end result is the same: she goes to rediscover her gifts in hope of finding something that she is so passionate about and hungry for that it drives her, consumes her, and sends her on the same quest as the chemist—to answer the infinitely unanswerable.

What I realized this week about this Scripture from Luke, however, absolutely blew me away. I was literally giddy for about 15 minutes. I have always understood this notion to mean that we're going to get to heaven, and God's entire plan will be laid out right in front of us. We'll have all the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to we've ever dreamed of times gazillion trillion. But it's not. It's not about how much we'll know. It points to that, sure, but get this: it's about how happy we will be. (I realize that I am far from the first to see this, but that makes it no less exhilarating.) I was giddy—omigosh-this-is-so-phenomenal-I-couldn't-sleep-if-I-wanted-to excited—over a drop of water! And now I'm told that God wants to fill me to the brim. How great and how glorious is this God of ours!

O, Mother of Goodness,
Teach us to be satisfied by nothing less than your Son. At the foot of the cross, you became our mother. Protect us, as you did Him in his infancy, that we might grow into His perfect sacrifice, and be filled here on earth in His Eucharist, and at the heavenly banquet in the life to come.