Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Without hunger or thirst

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 3rd week after Easter

April 26, 2023: Acts 8: 1-8; John 6: 35-40

Luke presents a very dramatic account today of two contrasting movements gaining ground: one, the persecutions against the new believers in Christ and the other, the community of believers growing stronger by the day both in quantity and quality. The Gen-Next Christians... were persecuted, they were killed, they were dragged to prison, they were flogged and stoned... but nothing disturbed them. How was this possible?

Jesus answers that question in the Gospel: because they have no hunger nor thirst. They do not hunger for anything other than the nourishment from the Lord. They do not thirst for anything other than doing what pleases the Lord. The model for us is Jesus himself who said 'my food is to do the will of the One who sent me' (Jn 4:34). They were people of total surrender to the Lord. Nothing mattered to them other than what God meant in their life.

If we truly eat the body of Christ with ardent faith and absolute and conscious understanding, we would not hunger for anything more, nor thirst for anything else. Our needless yearnings and disproportionate cravings are because we have not understood the real treasures that we have in our faith, in our spiritual covenant with the Lord.

When for us too, God matters the most, where we hunger or thirst for nothing more than what the Lord has in store for us... we shall for certain be satisfied. We shall be worthy of that title... the Gen-Next Christians.