“We have to hunger and thirst for Him and for His doctrine.” (Saint Josemaria).
I spend a lot of my life doing things. I am busy with work and cooking and cleaning. I socialise quite a lot and I spend a significant amount of time on eating and drinking and sleeping.
And all that time that I spend on this earth doing meaningless insignificant things, is simply wasted time.
Saint Josemaria said that, “We have to hunger and thirst for Him and for His doctrine.”
And I tend to agree. For I could spend my entire life procrastinating about what is really important. I could spend my entire life fussing about one thing or the other and never actually achieving the things that are important to me…
“Without interior life, and without formation, there is no true apostolate and no work that is fruitful. Whatever work is done will be fragile, fictitious even. How great, then, is our responsibility as children of God! We have to hunger and thirst for him and for his doctrine.” (Saint Josemaria, “The Forge”, 892).
And this responsibility to be charitable means that I am required to hunger for righteousness and justice and truth. It means that I am required to hunger for God because without that hunger there is no chance to achieve true Christian Charity…
“At times some Christians do not give the commandment of charity its full scope and value in their actions. In that last wonderful discourse of his, we find Christ surrounded by his chosen ones and leaving them these words as a form of testament: … a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Then he went further: … by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. If only we would make up our minds to live as He wants!” (Saint Josemaria, “The Forge”, 889).
And it occurs to me that there should be such a hunger in my soul to achieve the Holy Will of God. And equally, I am lacking in hunger for God and all that He desires. I replace that appetite for God with other things – I replace it with a hunger for work and money and friends and fun and shopping and food of the flesh. And in replacing that spiritual hunger with things of a physical nature, and those physical things are like the snacks that I eat before a meal. At the time they taste delicious, but they add no nutritional value. And that means that instead of making myself better and healthy through the hunger for the right things, I am replacing that worthwhile hunger with a worthless hunger for things of this world.
And today, I pray that I shall receive the Grace to be able to hunger for the Will of my Father in Heaven. Because without that hunger I am snacking on all the unhealthy stuff that simply make me fat…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.