Sharpening Our Hunger For God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

GIVEN the current climate of our environment that is now heavily marked by new and highly absorbing things, we cannot underestimate the importance of truly sharpening our hunger for God. Nowadays, if we are not careful, we would easily get trapped by the many distractions that can lead us to pure self-indulgence.

We should try our best to echo what the disciples asked Christ when Christ told them about a certain bread that would give life to the world: “Lord, give us always this bread.” (Jn 6,34) We should always have this hunger for this bread which is no other than Christ himself who makes himself really present in the Holy Eucharist.

That way, we can have the proper focus in our life even amid the many distractions around. Yes, we may need some distractions as a way of rest and relaxation. But we should no lose our proper focus. We have to be most wary of our tendency to be so carried away by them that we compromise that focus.

At the moment, we can see a disturbing developments involving many people, especially the young. A big segment of the people is getting addicted to games and the many other novelties played out in the Internet and in the new technologies.

They are now more self-centered and self-absorbed, prone to idleness, laziness and comfort-and-pleasure seeking. Their relationship to God and to others is all but blotted out of their consciousness.

We truly need to educate our bodily and spiritual faculties so they can acquire a theological meaning and purpose and not just purely biological and temporal functions. If we truly are serious in our Christian duty to make ourselves “another Christ” who is the pattern of our humanity, then that Christian transformation of our own selves should be the goal of all our faculties—the bodily as well as our spiritual faculties.

Thus, when we experience hunger for food or thirst for some drink, or curiosity for some knowledge, it should not just be food and drink and knowledge that we should be interested in. We should not remain in the level of the material and temporal aspects of our life. Our hunger and thirst should also lead us to God first of all.

In fact, more than food and drink and earthly knowledge, it should be God, his will and ways that we should be more interested in. We have to train ourselves to realize that our biological hunger and thirst and curiosity for knowledge can fully be satisfied only when we fulfill the will of God.

In this regard, we should see to it that in everything that we do, we should have the right intention. Indeed, we have to be most careful in handling our intentions, since they play a strategic role in our life. How and where we direct them would determine whether we want to be with God or simply to be with our own selves.

Our intentions express who and where in the end we want to be. Do we choose God, or do we simply choose ourselves, or the world in general? We’re actually always a choice between good and evil.

Even if we are not aware, or refuse to be aware, of this choice, which is usually the case, the choice between God and us, between good and evil is always made with every human act we do.

We need to realize then that we have to take utmost care of our intention, making it as explicit as possible, and honing it to get engaged with its proper and ultimate object who is God.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com