“You were made for more. That or the title Made for More is the title of numerous books written by Catholic and Protestant authors, some of them famous. Curtis Martin the founder of Fellowship of Catholic University Students wrote a book Made for More. A guy named Jim Sabala wrote one. Rick Warren, a famous pastor in California, uses that term in his books. Lisa Olsteen, Joel Olsteen’s wife, wrote one. I don’t know what they mean by made for more, maybe more stuff, I don’t know. (Sorry about that!) Our thirst or appetite for things drives us to get it, but then we quickly want more. We’re unsatisfied again and we’re always longing for more. That should tell us something. Nothing here ever quite fills that hole in us. We always want more.
My dear dad, God rest his soul he’s been dead now 12 years and I miss him, but when I was young we always had to have something new. We had to have that truck camper. If we just had that truck camper our family would be complete. We could go on camping trips and so we got a truck camper. We used it once, sat in the yard for months and months. He sold it for less than he bought it for. It was too small. We had to have a bigger one, so we got one of those with the van chassis and the big box on. That would work. That would be it. We got one. We used it once, maybe twice, sat in the driveway. He sold it for less than we bought it for. Finally, no we need once of those class A’s one of those big ones, the Winnebego’s. We got one. Three times maybe we used it. Eventually he sold it for less probably than he paid for it. We always want more. Fr. Viet in his homily (I kind of spy on him by listening on the live stream) he was talking about smartphones. The latest one always comes out and then you want it an so you get it and then two months later you don’t have the new one anymore. Something new is out and you want more. A guy like me it takes me about 2 ½ years to figure out how to use the one I have, so there’s two or three models out by the time I figure out the one I have. I just kind of experienced that on the Fourth of July with fireworks. They’d have this brilliant burst and then they’re gone and you’d go, ‘Where’s the next one?’ and even after the grand finale you have all these explosions. There’s always this sense of let down. ‘Is that it? That was only 20 minutes. Is it over?’ We want more. In the worst case scenario, the saddest case is addictions. You can never quite fill that hole. That next fix is never quite as good as we’d hoped. We always want more. Nothing can ever satisfy. Even in our best things, the relationships of love we always want to go deeper. We want to be more open. We want to share more fully and we find ourselves always wanting more.
Today in the Gospel the people come to Jesus and they want more. They want more bread. They want more miracles. They want more signs. They want more and Jesus says, ‘Don’t work for the stuff that’s gonna pass away. Work for the stuff that endures for eternal life, the stuff that the son of man can give you.’ Jesus realizes that we are in fact made for more and that we shouldn’t waste our time striving for things that will never satisfy us. Rather, he proposes that we turn to Him that we believe in Him that we orient our lives in Him. I was listening to a podcast the other day and it was about Theology of the Body actually but it talked about how people don’t want the Church or God in their bedroom. Well God not only wants to be in your bedroom, he wants to be in your bank account, he wants to be in your politics, he wants to be in everything in your life! He doesn’t want to just be in your 45 minutes (or with me an hour) on Sunday morning. Okay? He wants to be in everything. He wants your life to be oriented around the truth that He is. So, he tells us that this is how you will finally find some sense of satisfaction. He is the bread of life. Whoever comes to Him he said will never hunger and whoever believes in Him will never thirst at least not ultimately. So if we believe in the scriptures, if we believe that they teach the truth of God then how do we do it? If we have to do this, if we believe that then the question is how do we get it done? How do we make that happen in our lives? Jesus is calling us to intimacy with Him, to truly know Him to truly love Him and genuine love always seeks some kind of union. Love seeks union.
Chapter six of John that we’ve been reading now it’s gonna get interrupted on the middle of August because of the feast of the Assumption, but otherwise we’ll have been reading this pretty much through the whole month. It’s the source of our Catholic theology of the Eucharist. It is in the Eucharist that we become one with Jesus in the most intimate way, but like all relationships it doesn’t start with that deep intimacy. It starts by first approaching, by talking, by listening, by sharing, by just being together, by spending time together. Those are the first steps that ultimately will lead to fuller intimacy, but you can’t bypass those steps. The Eucharist shouldn’t be just an isolated thing. It should be culmination of an entire week of encountering and hanging out with the Lord.
I had a friend once who said, ‘If you Catholics really believe what you say you believe about the Eucharist, how can you go down the line like you’re going in a popcorn line in a theater? How come you don’t fall on your face in awe and wonder by what you’re receiving?’ He has a point. When we encounter something majestic and miraculous every week we begin to take it for granted. In the Eucharist we encounter the one through whom all things we made. That’s what the scriptures tell us. We encounter Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Light. No one can come to the Father but through Him and it’s Him we encounter in the Eucharist. It’s the one thing that can truly satisfy, but you know what? Even in the Eucharist, even at our best when we’ve been praying all week and we encounter Him even there after we’ve received Him, pretty soon we want more. We want to receive Him again. We want to encounter Him again. Ultimately we’ll fully be satiated in Him only in Heaven. There’s a beautiful image, I tried to look it up yesterday. I don’t remember where I heard it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it up. I’m pretty sure I heard it from somebody. I don’t know if it was a Saint or a writer, but he used the image of when a priest holds the host up, so you have this round host that the priest is holding up and he made the analogy of a porthole through a veil, the veil between Heaven and Earth. We look at that host held up at Mass when the priest says, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ and we can only see Christ by faith, but what we see with our eyes is bread, but our loved ones in Heaven, the angels and the saints, those who’ve gone before us, they see that same host on the other side of the porthole and they see Christ in all His glory. We’re seeing the same Christ. We because of our brokenness and in our current state we just don’t fully, we can’t, we probably couldn’t take it if we saw it, we can’t fully appreciate it, but it’s the same Christ that they gaze on in Heaven. Reflect on that as you come forward for Holy Communion.
Even though we receive the entire Christ in the Eucharist, we want even more because we were made ultimately for Heaven. The first line in the Catechism says, ‘Why do you exist? God made you out of an act of sheer goodness out of love.’ God who is perfect in himself didn’t need anything. He created us to share in the life of the Trinity to share in His own divine life. That’s what we ultimately thirst for and everything that we crave and can’t get enough of here is trying to fill that for which we were made. We get closest to it right here in the Eucharist. Do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures for eternal life which only the son of man will give you. Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger. Whoever believes in me will never thirst.’ Ponder His words as you come forward to receive the Lord of Life today. Yes indeed my friends, we were all made for more.”